This is the first in a series of blog posts called “What’s in a Name,” by my colleague Richard Pearce. After thoroughly researching, he will explain to us how plants received their common and latin names.
Let’s not quibble over words. It will be the same to me whatever name is applied.
— Carl Linnaeus, 1747
For the past few years I have been documenting the flora of the Upper Mississippi River region using an office scanner in place of a fixed-lens camera. The images are rich in detail, equivalent to what would be achieved by using a 200 megapixel close-up camera — if one existed. Scanner images can be printed up to several feet across and still carry fine details from edge to edge. Moreover, with computer profiling customized to the scanner, colors are exact.
Of course I need to know what species I’m imaging, so a modicum of research into each plant is obligatory. Today, with the resources of the Internet, this task has become greatly facilitated. Entire books, journals, and species lists with diagnostic descriptions are available online, each with searchable texts. Botanical collections, letters, and other archives can be tapped in minutes. Central to my initial investigations is finding the answer to the obvious question: How did the plant earn its name? Or to be more exact names as there will be, in addition to the “Latin” terms, a variety of common names.
New to botany, I was rather surprised by the multitude of “official” plant names and synonyms describing a single species. I had näively thought this aspect of the discipline had been taken care of long ago. But it is not unusual for even sources of authority to contradict each other. Part of the problem stems from the seemingly unbridled temptation by taxonomists to re-classify plants whose names everybody had just gotten used to. Additional constraints on conformity arise from the problem of building agreement across international borders or even among different scientific disciplines.
Ironically, a plant’s common name is oftentimes more logical than its scientific designation. The latter, if not making an historical or mythological reference, honoring a colleague, or evoking some fanciful image, might simply stand as a droll, inside joke. A serial number and a universally agreed upon cast of DNA markers would be a much surer way of grouping plants. Yet it remains everlastingly true, for Homo sapiens at any rate, that names, in addition to being easier to remember, are a lot more fun. In this series I will be sharing some standouts in plant nomenclature that have tickled this neophyte’s fancy.
