CHAPTER XXV 

 NOMENCLATURE 



ATTENTION has already been called to the classification 

 of plants into genera and species and the grouping of the 

 genera into larger divisions, the tribes and families. The 

 method of applying names to these divisions will now be 

 reviewed. The language of botanical nomenclature is 

 Latin. If names or words are taken from other languages 

 they are latinized. 



GENERIC NAMES 



271. A generic name is a noun (or rarely an adjective 

 used as a noun) and is always written with an initial 

 capital. The names may be original Latin names such as 

 Festuca and Hordeum, or Greek, such as Briza and 

 Bromus. Or they may be derived from Latin names, as 

 Digitaria (from digitus, a finger), or compounds of Latin 

 words as Trisetum (tri, three, seta, a bristle). More often 

 the name is compounded from two Greek words, as 

 Leptochloa (leptos, slender, chloa, grass) and Agropyron 

 (agros, a field, puros, wheat). The generic name may be 

 a latinized personal name, as Muhlenbergia (for Dr. 

 Henry Muhlenberg, an American botanist, 1753-1815), 

 and Deschampsia (for Loiseleur-Deslongchamps, a French 

 botanist, 1774-1849). A few names have been taken from 

 other languages than Latin or Greek without being latin- 

 ized, as Sabal (a kind of palm). Such aboriginal names are 

 known as barbarous names. Some of these have been 



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