57 



j in Latin? If so, how was it pronounced? Poor Jesup is certainly 

 ineffectively commemorated in Yes-soop'-i. 



It is also unfortunate that words of similar structure are 

 frequently required to carry the accent in different places, de- 

 pending on the quantity of the vowel in the second root. Thus 

 we are asked to say Po-lyg'-onum and Pol'-ypog'-on; Cal-lit'- 

 riche and Cal'-opog'-on, the former in each cases meaningless as 

 pronounced, the latter expressive. We are even advised to say 

 Lobelia lep-tos'-tachys and Phryma lep'-tostach'-ya. In many 

 cases the classical accent also causes some difficulty in pronun- 

 ciation, as in Len-coc'-rinum, acamp-toc' -lados , and bra-chys'- 

 tachys. How much easier these tongue-twisters become when 

 pronounced Lenc'-o-crin'-um, a- camp 1 '-to-clad 1 '-os , and brach'- 

 y-stach'-ys. 



Now scientific names represent, in a way, a universal lan- 

 guage among botanists, but in that sense they are used as 

 written terms instead of spoken. It is the rare exception that 

 they are used as common oral terms between persons speaking 

 different languages. There is accordingly no reason why these 

 terms, written always the same, should not be pronounced 

 differently in different languages, depending on the custom and 

 usage of the language employed. We have abundant precedent 

 already for variable pronunciation in geographical terms: we 

 say Paris, not Paree, the English say P5t'-omac, not Po-tom'- 

 ac, and the Germans may even say Yova instead of Iowa, yet 

 no confusion results. American tourists succeed in visiting Ver- 

 sailles, but how they do pronounce it! 



I wonder whom we are imitating, whose rules we are follow- 

 ing, when we call the spruce either Picea ovPicea, pronouncing 

 the c soft? According to Latin rules as I learned them we should 

 say Pe-kay-a, but our European friends say Pe-tsay'-a and still 

 seem quite content. And if we can modify Rosaceae from the 

 Latin Ro-sock'-d-i into the current English Ro-zdce'-e-e and the 

 German Ro-za-tsay'-e, why should we not feel equally at liberty 

 to disregard classical principles in other cases as well? 



Would you have appreciated, understood, or visualized 

 botanical names better when you first learned them, would 

 your students grasp them better now, if they were pronounced 

 according to the general principles outlined below? 



Commemorative names based on words of English origin or 



