Plant Names 



who use them they can convey no meaning at all, 

 and I have often listened with wonder to men 

 and women with no classical education whatever, 

 and without the slightest knowledge of Greek or 

 Latin, using a multitude of these long words 

 (sesquipedalia verba), and using them accurately 

 and, in many cases, with a real knowledge of 

 their meaning, though with no knowledge of their 

 derivation ; in such cases, their use of these words 

 shows a wonderful power of memory, which is no 

 way helped by tracing the fitness of the name for 

 the plant. 



There is now, and there always has been, a 

 desire to use for plants popular names only, and 

 the long scientific names have been mercilessly 

 held up to ridicule, and have given occasion for 

 many harmless jokes. Yet it is not easy to see 

 why botany should have been so specially singled 

 out for abuse and ridicule of its scientific names, 

 except that perhaps the study of gardening and 

 botany is the most popular of the sciences, and is 

 followed up by a larger number of half-educated 

 people. Rocks and stones, butterflies and moths, 

 and especially birds, are as much common objects 

 of the country as trees and flowers, and the 

 different sciences of geology, entomology, and 

 ornithology make use of scientific words not only 

 as difficult to understand as the scientific names 

 of plants, but much more difficult, because there 

 is not the same connection between the names 

 and the objects that there is in botany ; and yet 



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