The Use of Technical Names

Common or trivial names for plants are ,as stated above , found among most peoples and languages , at least for species considered important for food , clothing ,medicine , lumber , magic ,or for other necessities or amenities of life. Unforunately , this vernacular nomenclature is highly inexact and may lead to extreme confusion ,The same or very similar terms are often applied to two or more quite different plants . In the writings of Dioscorides ,for example , in the second century after christ ,great attention was paid to synonyms ,important in materia medica as indicating appropriate drugs to be administered in Latin , form an introduction to the various herbals of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance ; and the herbals themselves were followed by works which were lwss and less folk- pharmacology and more and more botanical in nature . They culminated in Linnaeus' (19) " species Plantarum " (1753) , the basis , with more or less modification , of all our modern scientific plant nomenclature .The story of technical plat nomenclature from Linnaeus ' day to the present has been one principally of incresing standardization .

Linnaeus ,through the description of plant specimens which were set aside in an herbarium as a kind of archive ,assigned a precise meaning to each plant name. To this he added the great convenience of consistently substituting for cumbersome phrases of several or many words brief citations provided by a binominal -i.e ., a single adjective for the species (e.g ., latifolia ) denoting some important characteristic of the plant , such as color ,size , leaf shape , geographical range (e.g , unalascensis ) ,and espicially among the orchids , morphological features found in the peculiar shape of the flower or its parts (e.g ., tubyliflora l triangulipetala ; ovatilabia ; etc .) .We find also many species named fpr their discoverers or for patrons or rulers .The name of the person thus honored is put in the genitive ,there is used for the species the nominative of a noun in apposition with the generic name . This is true or pre-Linnean gensu names used as specific epithet ( e. g. ,Orchis Morio).

Whenever possible without ambiguity , Linnaeus and his successors retained for genera the Latin terms familiar in western Europe or eastern America ,but there were far too few of them to designate the many plants in countries where botanists were beginning to explore great virgin territories ,treasure -houses of botanical novelties. They were , again , too few to designate the more discriminating segregations among genera already known or in the case of lowly and inconspicuous plants overlooked by earlier collectors . Accordingly, it was somtimes necessary to invent new names should be used but once. For specific names ,these were formulated less frequently in the Greek (e.g. anthropophora ),more commonly in the Latin ( e.g., rotundifolia ), and among genera ,occasionally in Latin (e.g ,Haenaria ) or very often in Latinized Greek (e.g. Epidendrum) . On the whole ,specific names are much less puzzling as to their meaning than are generic epithets . This would be expected from the greater frequency of their use .

Some generic names are taken from simple ,uncompounded Greek and Latin words or from words only slightly modified (e.g., Liparis ) ,but for the very large numbers not thus provided ,the precedents set by Linnaeus ,Lindley , and others have permitted the use of classical names of quite uncertain application . These are known as nomina nuda .In addition ,these earlier botanists have employed mythological names (e.g Arethusa ; Calypso),as Linnaeus did in his naming of the Lepidoptera ,and names of historical women (Aspasia ) or of his naming of the Lepidoptera , and names of historical women (Aspasia ) or of men more or less tenuously associated with certain plants ( e.g., the description under Oberonia in the list that follows ). At other times ,vernacular and sometimes indeclinable names are unblushingly taken into technical nomenclature and esatblished as the scientific epithet as well .

But the largest group of generic names ,which gives occasion for this book , consists usually of two Greek words combined and Latinized by post-Linnaean botanists. The elements thus selected emphsize noteworthy features of orchid floral morphology ,zygomorphic flowers ,ovary , pollen -masses , lip , spurs, column, or else grosser characters in corms ,roots , leaves and forms of inflorescence .

The type of compound commonly employed is known as " possessive "- e.g., macrophylla " whose leaves ,phylla ,are large , macros" . In this sort of compound ,the first element is an adjective ,Greek or Latin , the second a noun ; and the resultant word is an adjective ,even though substatively used in generic names (e.g., Calopogon ). Various other derivative forms are otern met. Especially common are those ending n -odes (e.g., psychodes) and the trisyllabic -oides (e.g ., ophioglossides) ,both suffixes meaning " resembling " .

Less fresqently than with specific epithets ,the names of genera may honor individuals usualy with feminive suffixes in -a, -ea, pr -ia based on their surnames ,e.g., Listera ,Ponthieva , Stanhopea , Okes -Amesia etc .

Some botanists (C.S.Rafinesque -schmalts is an outstanding example) have been poor linguists or philogists and have so modified or mangled sundry Greek and Latin elements in the generic names which they coined that it is difficult , unless they themselves explained their intentions ,to discover why they chose particular names.

An analysis of the more than 1250 generic names of orchids treated in the following pages shows that Greek was the preferred language of orchidologists in making new epithets .This classical languages accounts for no less than 68 % of the names .Surprisingly ,Latin is the basis for but 6 % .Only 0.9 % are bastard names - those ill -formed from a Latin and a Greek root. Twenty -two per cent of the genera commemorate specific persons ,and 2 % are of geographical origin . A few names (0.5 %) are derived from native languages ,wuch as Japanese, Hindi , Malayan . Classical figures of history and mythology account for 0. 4 % .We have been completely unable to explain the origin of only about one-half of one per cent. The remaining few result from anagrams (rearrangement of the letters of a former genus) or are composites made form the parts of the epithets of two existing genera.