2100 NAMES NOMENCLATURE 



NAMES NOMENCLATURE 



ing that the use of nodiflora as a name for this plant 

 began with Linnaeus under another genus, although 

 the double citation does not indicate the number of 

 transfers from genus to genus that may have been made 

 in the meantime. 



In the prefatory pages to Volume I, the method of 

 nomenclature employed in this Cyclopedia is briefly 

 stated; but it may be well to make an explanation of 

 the use of capital letters in specific names. It is the 

 rule in English that proper adjectives are capitalized, 

 as American, African, Canadian. This is not the prac- 

 tice in all other languages, however. For the sake of 

 uniformity, it is now the practice with many authors to 

 decapitalize all specific names. The specific name should 

 agree with its genus in gender; but some of the old 

 substantive or generic 

 names are used as specific 

 names in defiance of gen- 

 der terminations, and the 

 use of the capital letter 

 explains the exception. 

 Thus Dracocephalum Mol- 

 davica indicates that Mol- 

 davica is an old substan- 

 tive (used once as a genus) 

 and is used in apposition 

 and not as an adjective; 

 otherwise it would be D. 

 moldavicum, meaning the 

 moldavian dracoceph- 

 alum. Other substan- 

 tives are not Latin and 

 cannot be Latinized, as 

 Dolichos Lablab; the word 

 Lablab is not an adjective 

 qualifying Dolichos. Bear- 

 ing these distinctions in 

 mind, such names as Cam- 

 panula Medium, Dioscorea 

 Batatas, Cornus Amomum, 

 Schinus Molle, Mapania 

 Pandanophyllum are 

 understood. The Vienna 

 Code makes a recom- 

 mendation on the use of 

 capitals: "Specific names 

 begin with a small letter 

 except those which are 

 taken from names of per- 

 sons (substantives or ad- 

 jectives) or those which 

 are taken from generic 

 names (substantives or 

 adjectives)." Under this 

 recommendation, descrip- 



2432. Alton's sheet of Rubus villosus, preserved in London. 



tive names are not capitalized. A special category 

 are the geographical names, but they may be fairly 

 regarded as descriptive and be used with small letters; 

 this is the practice in this Cyclopedia, for the pur- 

 pose of conforming to the recommendation. A few con- 

 fusions arise in decapitalizing geographical names. 

 For example, Syringa persica, one of the lilacs, takes the 

 small p because the name means Persian; whereas 

 Prunus Persica, the peach, takes the large P because 

 the word was once used for a genus (Persica vulgaris, 

 the peach), although that generic word was derived 

 from the country Persia whence the peach was sup- 

 posed, at that time, to have come. In some cases, the 

 same or similar specific names may be personal or 

 geographical, and many geographical names are derived 

 directly from persons, as Bolivia, Rhodesia, Colombia, 

 America; but in practice little or no confusion arises. 

 The practice in this Cyclopedia, then, is to capitalize 

 specific names derived from persons (either in the 

 genitive as Hookeri, or in adjective as Hookeriana), 

 and all substantives used in apposition, as Pyrus 



Mains, Alpinia Allughas, Vaccinium Vitis-Idsea, 

 Phlox Stellaria, Ipomoea Nil, Polygonum Posumbu. 



How a plant is named. 



A personal narrative may illustrate some of the com- 

 plexities in nomenclature. The case that is here chosen 

 for elucidation is not more interesting or important 

 than scores of others that might be taken from the 

 experiences of botanists, but it will afford an example. 

 Blackberries and dewberries (which are of the genus 

 Rubus) are variable. This is the botanist's way of say- 

 ing that there are many intermediate forms and that it 

 is difficult to distinguish one kind from another. On 

 different soils and in different places, the plants look 

 different. They may intergrade. With them, evolution 



has probably not yet pro- 

 ceeded far enough to ob- 

 literate the intermediates, 

 and the "missing links" 

 may not have disappeared. 

 The species are not "well 

 marked." Therefore it is 

 not strange that botanists 

 disagree as to what are 

 species and what are 

 varieties of species. What 

 one botanist calls a species 

 of Rubus, another prefers 

 to call a variety, or a mere 

 "form" perhaps due to 

 influence of soil, elevation 

 or exposure. The general 

 tendency is to make more 

 species in all genera than 

 did the old botanists, be- 

 cause we know the plants 

 more intimately and recog- 

 nize differences that were 

 not seen or understood 

 one hundred years and 

 more ago. What Linnaeus 

 thought was one species 

 we may now think is sev- 

 eral; and if we break up 

 his one species into sev- 

 eral, we must know which 

 one of these forms he had, 

 in order that we may re- 

 tain his name for it; and 

 we determine this fact by 

 consulting his herbarium 

 (if a specimen is pre- 

 served) which is now in 

 London. 



Or, again, we may mis- 



understand what Linnaeus meant to designate by a 

 given name, and may use his name for a different 

 plant from that which he had in mind. Even if we 

 see his specimen, we may make an error in identify- 

 ing it, for it is not always an easy matter posi- 

 tively to identify and classify a dried specimen, 

 particularly if the specimen was fragmentary or poor in 

 the beginning or has become broken or insect-eaten. 

 It sometimes happens, therefore, that when two men 

 examine the type specimen of a "critical" species, they 

 arrive at different conclusions as to what that species 

 is. Each may publish his views, applying the name as 

 seems right to him, and botanists choose the one 

 determination or the other according as they accept one 

 man or the other. The naming of plants, therefore, is 

 not an exact procedure. 



The name "Rubus villosus" is one that Aiton gave in 

 1789 to a plant that grew in the gardens at Kew, near 

 London. The plant, he said, came from America. It 

 was described in brief Latin phrase, with little indica- 

 tion as to its habit of growth. Before this time, even 



