NAMING OF PLANTS 29 
Suborders, or groups between orders and genera, terminate in 
-ee. Names of genera are nouns or words taken as nouns. They 
are derived from any source,—from prominent or peculiar char- 
acteristics, from localities, or from names of botanists,—or they 
may be wholly arbitrary. Personal generic names are divested 
of titles and take a final a, or, in many cases, for euphony, ia. 
Thus, Ulva is the Latin for “sedge”; Ectocarpus is from two 
Greek words meaning “fruit outside”; Corallina means “coral- 
like”; Grinnellia is named for Mr. Henry Grinnell. 
The specific names are commonly adjectives, but sometimes 
they are nouns, and occasionally are the names of the botanists 
who first described the plants, in which case the name terminates 
in -i or -ti. The specific name always follows the generic name, 
thus: 
Ectocarpus Hooperi, a species of Ectocarpus, first described by 
Mr. Hooper. 
Grinnellia Americana, a species, peculiar to America, of a genus 
named for Mr. Grinnell. 
Griffithsia corallina, a species resembling coral, and belonging 
to a genus named for Mrs. Griffiths. 
With regard to the four subclasses mentioned above, it should 
be said that alge are strictly classified in accordance with their 
methods of reproduction; but since allied species have, with few 
exceptions, the same color, the classification by colors is generally 
adopted as convenient and sufficiently precise. 
Familiar, or, in technical language, “ vulgar,” names are very 
generally given to land plants, and especially to flowers ; but sea- 
weeds are less in sight than flowers are, and so, save in a few 
instances, have not been named except by the man of science. 
To remember the scientific names will not be found difficult, for 
without effort or special pains to acquire the new vocabulary, 
the names, like those of new personal friends, will insensibly 
become fixed in the memory. 
In the body of this work each of the groups (class, subclass, 
order, ete.), in the classification of both animals and plants, is 
indicated by a special kind of type. 
