PARTI - What’s in a name? Botanical Latin without (too many) tears.

Useful reference books

Gilbert-Carter, H. Glossary of the British Flora. Cambridge University Press, 3rd ed. 1964. ISBN: 9780521114882

Gledhill, D. The Names of Plants. Cambridge University Press, 2nd ed. 1989. ISBN: 0521366755 (The 2008 fourth edition is considerably enlarged, but the smaller 1989 edition seems to be adequate and is easier to handle.)

Harrison, L. RHS Latin Names for Gardeners. London: Mitchell Beazley, 2012. ISBN: 9781845337315

Payne, R.M. Flora ofEly. King’s Lynn: R.M.Payne, 2002.

Rose, F. The Wild Flower Key. Penguin 2nd ed. (updated by C. O’Reilly), 2006. ISBN: 9780723251750

Stearn, W.T. Botanical Latin. David & Charles, 1983.

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1. How do botanical names relate to the classification of plants?

The universally accepted classification system of plants is hierarchical. Starting from the most general category and moving down the hierarchy to the most specific, the various levels of the classification can be mapped as follows:

Classes – Orders – Families – Genera – Species – Sub-species – Varieties – Forms

At each level of this hierarchy, further subdivisions are possible, which try to impose some order on the relationships between members of the same group e.g. each genus may be divided into sub-genera, and these in turn may be organised by dividing them into sections or series, so that the closest relatives within the group are listed close together and the less similar members are kept further apart. See Francis Rose’s The Wild Flower Key, for examples of how such sub- groupings may be made at the level of “Families” e.g. the Cabbage (Crucifer) Family on p. 196- 200, where six sub-groups are identified on the basis of their physical properties.

We shall focus on plant names as they related to three levels of the main hierarchy structure outlined above: Families – Genera – Species. The basic unit of classification is the Species.

How are plants assigned to a given Family, Genus, or Species? They must share “a sufficient number of common features to suggest that they have all evolved from a common ancestral stock” (Gledhill p. 10).

The features chosen to achievethis classification have changed over time:  Early systems – Mainly culinary and medicinal concepts.  Sixteenth century onwards – Morphology of the plant, including reproductive structures.

1  Today – Microscopic (sub-cellular) morphological features, chemical information, DNA analysis and genetic information including mutations. It is inevitable that as botanical knowledge widens and deepens, re-classification, and therefore re-naming, will occur.

2. A brief history of the naming of plants

This outline history is based around the names of those people who over the centuries have made the most significant contribution to developing a system for the classification and naming of plants. It helps us to understand how the present-day standardised, international system of botanical nomenclature has come into being, and why it includes some rather peculiar features that do not necessarily correspond to current scientific knowledge of the plant world.

Theophrastus (c. 370-285 BC) Theophrastus was a pupil of the Greek philosopher Aristotle, and later took over his master’s peripatetic school. He described some 500 “kinds” of plant from a wide geographical area (he had specimens brought back from the campaigns of Alexander the Great). He was probably the first to recognise certain physical distinctions between groups of plants e.g. monocotyledons and dicotyledons, and also the reproductive process of pollination. He named many plants – especially those that were unusual or of practical use – but did not attempt to name them all.

Dioscorides (c. 64 AD) recorded about 600 “kinds” of plants.

Pliny the Elder (23-79 AD) compiled information about plants from the writings of 473 other authors, describing about athousand “kinds”. His encyclopaedic work Naturalis Historia became a model for subsequent works on natural history.

We then jump over the so-called “Dark Ages”, to the sixteenth century and the Renaissance botanists, who collectively recognised and named some 4,000 “kinds” of plants. Important botanists of the Renaissance period include (amongst many others) John Parkinson and Caspar Bauhin.

John Parkinson (1569-1629), a London apothecary, produced an encyclopaedia of the plants then in cultivation. This work was an influential horticultural landmark.

By this time, botanical publications were beginning to use plant names formed from a single word (which was later to become the generic name) followed by an epithet (a descriptive word or phrase) – the pattern that is still in use today. The chief problem was that the names were not yet standardised, so there was a multiplicity of names for a single plant. For example, Caspar Bauhin (1550-1664), in hisflora of 1623, listed eleven different namesfor the creeping buttercup Ranunculus repens. ………………..

Excursus: Paracelsus - Theophrastus Bombast von Hohenheim (1493-1541) – an obstacle to the development of scientific systems of botanical classification and naming Paracelsus’ approach to the botanical classification was based on his so-called “Doctrine of Signatures”, which claimed that God had conferred on each “kind” of plant some features that would show humankind how they might use that plant e.g. plants with kidney-shaped leaves could be used for the treatment of kidney disorders. Furthermore, according to Della Porta, who supported Paracelsus’ views, the preferred habitat of some plants was ordained by God to help

2 humankind e.g. the Salix (Willow) species prefers a wet habitat, people living in wet environments are more prone to suffer from rheumatoid diseases, and the bark of the Salix species contains salicylic acid used as an analgesic to control rheumatic/arthritic pain. Such beliefs meant that an attempt was made to proceed with the classification and naming of plants on the basis of how they were thought to serve human needs, rather than on the basis of observation of clusters of features suggesting a common developmental pathway.

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The seventeenth century saw significant progress in the classification of plants:

Robert Morison (1620-1683) introduced a system for organising the grouping of plants into a hierarchy of increasing size, and he was thefirst to recognise the group that is nowknown as the Umbelliferae (or Apiaceae) family.

John Ray (1627-1705) utilised the distinction between monocotyledons and dicotyledons in his classification, although he retained the distinction between flowering herbaceous plants and woody ones. He also used a binomial system for naming plants.

Joseph de Tournefort (1656-1708) sorted around 10,000 “kinds” or species of plant into 698 groups or genera.

But while the classification systems were developing rapidly, way beyond the primitive herbal and “signature” groupings, the bewildering profusion of names remained until the 18th century brought the seminal work of Carl Linnaeus.

Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778), a Swedish botanist who had not shown much talent for anything at school, nevertheless managed to bring some order to the naming of plants. He classified 7,300 species into 1098 genera, and gave to each species a two-word name consisting of a generic name, followed by a descriptive epithet – using Latin forms for both words. His naming system is the forerunner of the binomial system in use today. The results of his efforts were published in two major works: Genera Plantarum, 1764 (6t hed.), and Species Plantarum, 1753.

Excursus: Linnaeus and the doctrine of Divine Creation

Linnaeus’ work on the development of a system for classifying and naming plants went hand in hand with changes in his own attitudes to the doctrine of Divine Creation. He believed initially

3 that since the species was basic unit of plant classification, each species must have been created as an entity by God. At the sametime, he was aware that his grouping ofplants into species, of species into genera, of genera into families, on the basis oftheir observed physical characteristics, implied a network of developmental (evolutionary) pathways defining and connecting the different plant groups; and he must have been aware also of the experiments in hybridization of plants being carried out in Holland at the time. At a later point, he came to the conclusion that God had created the “basic” plant, and from it the families and genera, but that the species and varieties were the product of processes of natural evolution or hybridization. His views may be inferred from the 6th edition of his 1764 work Genera Plantarum, and also from his listing of varieties under their species in Species Plantarum published in 1753; but they were so contrary to current teaching on Divine Creation that he was unable to express them openly in his writings. It was another hundred years before the theory of the evolution of species was to become the subject of public debate with the appearance of Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859).

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3. The standardisation of botanical names

The second half of the eighteenth century and the whole of the nineteenth century saw a huge increase in the number of known species and varieties, as plant-hunters brought thousands of specimens back to Europe for classification and the assigning of names. The sheer numbers of plants, and the fact that many different languages were used to name them, resulted in a proliferation of names and much confusion; and it became apparent that some kind of international agreement would be needed to establish a standard system for creating and assigning botanical names.

In the meantime, the development of the microscope resulted in a growing body of knowledge about the cellular structure of plants and their mechanisms of fertilisation. At the same time, beginning with the work of Gregor Mendel in the mid-nineteenth century, the questions of inheritance of plant characteristics and variation within species were under investigation. Any standardised system for classifying and naming plants had to take into account the new discoveries being made in both of these fields.

Defining the levels of classification and delimiting the species

(i) The names of families and genera depend forthe most part on Antoine Laurent de Jussieu’s 1789 classification in Genera Plantarum, which searched for better ways of grouping plants naturally, and established 100 families, most of which we still recognise. (ii) The binomial names of species depend largely on the foundation laid by Linnaeus’ 1753 work Species Plantarum. (iii) Delimiting a species: this process involves identifying a collection of individual plants whose characteristics are sufficiently stable to be defined, applying a name to this group, and specifying a “type” (i.e. an exemplar) for that name. The names of species may change overtime, in the light of new discoveries. (iv) Defining levels below the species: Subspecies may have to be recognised, where groups of plants within a given species have a number of distinctive features, or a distinctive geological or ecological distribution. Subspecies in turn may be divided into varieties, where the degree of departure from the norms of the species is of a

4 lesser order. A lower level of “form” is also occasionally recognised, wherethere is just one distinctive feature resulting from a genetic mutation.

Establishing the rules for botanical names

Augustin Pyrame de Candolle: Théorie élémentaire de la botanique, 1813  Plants should have names in Latin or (if not derived from Latin) in Latin form.  Rules of Latin grammar should apply to names consisting of two or more words.  In choosing a name, priority should be given to the name assigned by the person who first discovered and/or described the plant.

International Botanical Congress in London, 1862  Adopted control over botanical nomenclature.

International Botanical Congress in Paris, 1867 Adopted the Four Laws of Alphonse de Condolle (son of A.P. de Condolle):  A single plant species should have no more than one name.  No two plant species should sharethe samename.  If aplant already has morethan onename,thevalid name should be the earliest oneto be published after 1753 (the date of Linnaeus’ Species Plantorum).  The author’sname should be cited after thename of theplant.

International Botanical Congress in Vienna, 1905  The requirement to use Latin was written into the rules for the first time.

The “KewRule” was overturned in 1930  British botanists (unlike others) had adopted the so-called “Kew Rule”, using only those epithets published afterthe plant had been assigned to its correct genus. The Kew Rule was eventually defeated in 1930 in favour of a rule giving priority to the epithet first published from 1st May 1753 onwards.

The United States of America issued its own Code of Botanical Taxonomy in 1947  This “Rochester Code” disregarded the requirement to use Latin names.

Full international agreement on the rules for botanical nomenclature (including the use of Latin) was finally was reached in 1959 and was made retroactive to 1st January 1935.

The present International Code of Botanical Nomenclature has a set of six underlying principles (set out by Gledhill p. 28), which have evolved directly from the “Four Laws” of Alphonse de Condolle. The code is, however, constantly reappraised in the light of growing knowledge in the fields of plant morphology, chemistry and genetics. It includes detailed rules about the procedures required for validating any new plant name.

4. Naming cultivated plants

What relevance did the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature have for horticulturalists? Plant breeders needed to follow the code in order to protect the new varieties that they produced, while specialists or collectors of a particular plant group needed to reference the botanical names in order to distinguish between all the varieties within their chosen group. Ordinary gardeners, on

5 the other hand, frequently got by with the common names of their plants, without any reference at all to the botanical ones – which meant that many garden centres, seed catalogues, etc. tended to do the same. Until the 1950s, then, there was a confusing diversity of approachesto the matter, including the mixing of botanical and vernacular names, applying botanical names at the wrong level e.g. genus names applied to species (or vice versa), and using so-called “fancy names” with no particular referenceto the plant world at all.

“The Cultivated Code”, 1952-53

At the 1952 meeting of the International Botanical Congress, a Committee for the Nomenclature of Cultivated Plants, in agreement with the International Horticultural Congress, adopted an international code for the naming of cultivated plants. The agreed set of rules became known as The Cultivated Code. It was first published in 1953, and has been revised periodically since then. The aim of the code is to “promote uniformity and fixity in the naming of agricultural, sylvicultural and horticultural cultivars (varieties)”. It thus provides a measure of protection to plant breeders, for although it has no legal status in itself, it can be enforced in law with the assistance (in Europe) of the Community Plant Variety Rights Office.

Cultivars and their names

The Cultivated Code introduced the term “cultivar” (cv.) to encompass varieties/derivatives of wild plants produced under cultivation. Only one category of cultivated variant of an individual wild plant is allowed: namely, the cultivar or “garden variety” (not to be confused with the botanical variety). The processes that may be used to produce a plant that qualifies as a cultivar are specified in detail in the code. Despite this degree of specificity, however, the Cultivated Code is more flexible than the Botanical Code, in that it allows for the existence of groups of plants with particular sets of features related to the needs of horticulture and farming e.g. disease resistance, or frequency of cropping. It achieves this flexibility by having no requirement for “types”, but instead “regarding cultivars as part of an open system of nomenclature” (Gledhill p.48).

From 1st January 1959, in another departure from the Botanical Code, every new cultivar has to receive a“fancy name” which is not Latinized. This namemay comefrom any source: aperson, the nursery of origin, a descriptive term, or a phrase with more than one source (such as the cultivar of Nepeta called “Six Hills Giant”, a “fancy name” combining a location with a physical feature of the plant). Those cultivars that already had a Latin name before 1959 continue to be identified by this name. There is therefore a mixture of older Latin and more recent “fancy names” in the cultivars of some species: one such example is Nigella Damascena, where pre- 1959 varieties haveold Latin names e.g. alba, flore pleno, while more modern cultivars bear the names “Miss Jekyll” (below left) and “Oxford Blue” (below right).

6 PART II - What’s in a name? Botanical Latin without (too many) tears.

How botanical names are constructed

1. Higher levels of the classification: Classes (Super-orders) andOrders

Names may reflect some salient physical feature characteristic of the whole group e.g. Monocotyledons referring to the single first leaf of a seedling (formed, unlike later leaves, from a significant part of the embryo). The leaves of monocotyledons are normally parallel-veined. This group includes the family Poaceae (grasses).

Other names for higher-level groupings are taken simply from the Latin term for the most familiar member of the group at the lower level of the genus or family e.g. the order Rosales, which of course includes the family Rosaceae.

2. Family names

The Latin names of plant families are adjectives in a feminine plural form, but are used as nouns.

Each name consists of two parts: (i) the stem-name ofthe type; (ii) the suffix -aceae, a feminine plural form meaning ‘belonging to, of the nature of’:

Genus Family Vernacular name Ranuncul-us  Ranuncul-aceae Buttercup family Nymphae-a  Nymphae-aceae Water-lily family

Sometimesthese rules of construction have been set aside. For many years, the Botanical Code included provision for a name that had long-standing use and wide acceptability to be “conserved”, even though it did not meet allthe requirements of the Code. Some of thesenames are still found in the literature, although the tendency in more recent floras and other published works is to use names that comply fully with the Code. The following are the eight “conserved” family names and their more recent equivalents:

Old “conserved” name New name Genus name on which new name is built Compositae  Asteraceae Aster (G. & L. star) Cruciferae  Brassicaceae Brassica (L. cabbage) Gramineae  Poaceae Poa (G. pasture) Guttiferae  Clusiaceae Clusia (name commemorating the Flemish Renaissance botanist

7 Charles l’Ecluse) Labiatae  Lamiaceae Lamium (G. throat, gullet) Leguminosae  Fabaceae Faba (L. broad bean) Palmae  Arecaceae Areca (plant name used on Malabar Coast of India) Umbelliferae  Apiaceae Apium (L. celery, but used by some L. authorsto refer to a group of Umbellifers)

3. Genus names

The Latinized name of a genus is usually a singular noun, or another part of speech (e.g. an adjective or verb) functioning as if it were a singular noun. By convention, the name is always written with a capital letter. It can be taken from any source whatever: some examples of the diversity of sources and internal structures of genus names are set out below:

Genus name Source language / part(s) of speech Meaning

(a) Iris Greek / noun rainbow

(b) Galium Greek / noun milk

(c) Hebe Greek / proper noun Greek goddess of youth

(d) Melilota Greek / 2 nouns in apposition meli = honey lotos = name of various plants

(e) Bellis Latin / adjective pretty

(f) Parietaria Latin / adjective of walls

(g) Fumaria Medieval Latin / compound noun smokeoftheearth Fumus+terrae

(h) Teraxacum PersianMedieval Latin / noun bitter pot-herb

(i) Linnaea Made-up name commemorating Carl Linnaeus

(j) Buddleia Made-up name commemorating Adam Buddle, a seventeenth century botanist

(k) Petunia Brazil / noun tobacco

See Rose Dixon’s more complete listing of common genus names for many more examples, with interesting notes on their origins.

8 4. Species names Species names are normally composed of two parts:  a genus name, followed by…  an epithet: that is, a descriptive word – usually (but not always) an adjective – providing more specific information about the species concerned.

Following the rules of Latin grammar, the adjectival component needs to ‘agree’ with its noun. We shall discuss what is involved in grammatical ‘agreement’ at a later stage; but for the moment it is enough to say that the adjective must have:  the same number as its noun (singular or plural)  the same gender as its noun (masculine, feminine or neuter).

Turning from the grammar of species namesto the semantics of their epithets, it is interesting to discover how wide-ranging they are in terms of their sources and meanings. The sheet attached with the title Selected Specific Epithets and their Meanings lists 87 of the most commonly found epithets, and gives the meaning of each. The meanings fall into a number of broad semantic categories, which might include the following:

Semantic group Latin species name Meaningof epithet Common name

Geographical Erigeron canadensis Canadian Canadian Fleabane Parietaria judaica Judaean Pellitory-of-the-wall

Note that country names can be misleading e.g. Muscari armeniacum, a garden species of Grape Hyacinth, is a native of China, not of Armenia!

Habitat Malva sylvestris of the woods Common Mallow Cirsium arvense of the fields Creeping Thistle Rumex aquaticus of the water Scottish Dock (found only by lakes and streams in Loch Lomond area)

Manner of growth Rubus fruticosus shrubby Bramble ( L. frutex ‘shrub’) Trifolium repens creeping White Clover Galium aparine clinging Cleavers Lapsana communis gregarious Nipplewort (i.e. growing in clumps) Poa annua annual Annual Meadow-grass Bellis perennis perennial Daisy

Other physical characteristics Hordeum murinum mouse-grey Wall Barley Sambucus nigra black Elder Cardamine hirsutum hairy Hairy Bitter-cress Lactuca serriola in ranks Prickly Lettuce (referringto the prickles?) Hedera helix twining Common Ivy Epilobium tetragonum square Square-stalked

9 (lit: ‘four-cornered’) Willowherb Acer pseudo-platanus false Plane tree Sycamore Veronica hederifolia ivy-leaved Ivy-leaved Speedwell

Reproductive features Anisantha sterilis sterile, infertile Barren Brome Urtica dioica Greek: ‘oftwo houses’ Common Nettle (i.e. separate male & female plants)

Uses: medical, culinary, etc. Taraxacum officinale having medical use Dandelion (lit: from a shop of an apothecary) Sisymbrium officinale having medical use Hedge Mustard Papaver somniferum sleep-inducing Opium Poppy Serratula tinctoria used in dyeing Saw-wort Association with a person Buddleia davidii Genus name commemorates 17th century botanist Adam Buddle; the epithet commemorates l’Abbé Armand David, a 19th century plant-collector and specialist in Chinese plants.

Geranium robertianum Herb Robert. The epithet does not refer to a botanist or plant- collector, or even (as far as we know) to any particular medieval Robertus.

The web-site found at http://wildflowerfinder.org.uk presents a more detailed categorisation of epithets, where, for example, my category ‘Physical characteristics’ is subdivided into Leaf Shape, Leaf Edge, Flowers, Shape/Posture, Hairs, andProperty (rather a vague category covering a number of characteristics including texture, tuberous roots, horned shapes, and so forth). This is not a particularly scholarly listing, but it does provide quite a useful starting point for investigating epithets. Some of the terms listed are to do with the genetic propertiesof plants e.g. the number of complete sets of chromosomes (the Ploidy level) within the nucleus of a cell involved in the reproductive process. These terms are important in classification and in plant breeding – for example, in developingnew varietiesof wheat; but asfar as I know, contrary to the impression given in this list, descriptive terms such as haploid, diploid, triploid, etc. have not (yet) found their way into the nomenclature of wild plants or even of cultivated ones. On the other hand, despite its shortcomings, this list does remind us helpfully that a few endings of epithets have a particular meaning in themselves:

 -oides means ‘resembling’ e.g. Laburnum anagyr-oides, ‘resembling the genus Anagyris (in being curved backwards)  -escens (-ascens) means ‘becoming’, and may be attached, for instance, to the epithet of a plant derived by cross-breeding e.g. Populus x canescens, ‘Grey Poplar’ resulting from the cross fertilisation of Populus alba, ‘White Poplar’ and Populus tremula, ‘Aspen’.

10 Regarding the second of these examples, I think that it would be more useful to rememberthat the general suffix –ens (-ans) marks the present participle form of a verb. It is therefore used to indicate any form of ongoing process: thus repens, ‘creeping’; patens, ‘spreading’; graveolens, ‘emitting a strong scent’; virens or virescens ‘becoming green’ (in contrast to the adjective viridus, ‘green’), and finally, returning to our original example, canescens ‘becoming white’ (present participle ofthe verb caneo, ‘to be white’).

5. The grammatical formation of Latin names

Notice that whatever the source of the name, the word is always Latinized in form; and, as we shall see later, when the different words which constitutethename of a species are put together, they haveto obey therules of Latin grammar. Some knowledge of Latin word-formation and grammar is certainly useful in learning and remembering botanical names. However, even a few very basic facts about Latin should be sufficient to help us become more familiar with them.

Latin has three grammatical systems that affect the form of any given noun or adjective: the system of number,the system of gender,andthe system of case-marking.

Number: Nouns may be singular or plural. In English we have a variety of ways of changing a noun from singular to plural: the commonest is to suffix the word with –s or –es, or occasionally with –en (oxoxen; other ways involve an internal vowel-change (manmen, mousemice). In Latin, the plural is usually formed by adding a plural ending, or by replacing a singular ending with a plural one. The actual forms of the pluralising suffix vary considerably, as the examples below show:

Singular Plural Meaning flos flor-es ‘flower’ pin-us pin-i ‘pinetree’ ros-a ros-ae ‘rose’

As already mentioned, the nouns used to name botanical families are always in the plural form: Aster-aceae, Ranuncul-aceae, etc. Singular nouns are normally used in genus and species names although examples of plural forms are found occasionally. Any adjective, numeral, or other descriptive word that qualifies a noun must agree with that noun in number.

Gender: Most European languages distinguish between genders to a greater or lesser degree. All Latin nouns belong to a specific gender i.e. they are masculine, feminine or neuter in form, and any adjective, numeral or other word that qualifies the noun has to agree with it in gender. In the examples of species names given below, the first component of the name is a noun whose gender I have indicated in the third column; the second component is an adjectival word whose ending “agrees” in gender with the noun that it describes:

Noun Adjective Gender Common name Melilotus alb-us Masculine noun & adjective, White Melilot Gender indicated by the suffix –us

11 Sinapis alb-a Feminine noun & adjective, White mustard Gender indicated by the suffix -a

Chenopodium alb-um Neuter noun + adjective Fat-hen Gender indicated by the suffix –um

Note that for some reason the names of trees are typically feminine in Latin: so even names which have the masculine-looking ending -us e,g, Pinus ‘Pine’, Ulmus ‘Elm’, Prunus ‘Plum’, are actually feminine in gender, and therefore trigger feminine endings on following adjectival words e.g. Prun-us spinos-a ‘Blackthorn (Sloe)’.

What if the ending of the epithet appears not to match the ending of its noun?

Agreements in gender andnumber in a species name are easy enough to understand when thetwo endings look alike:

Ranuncul-us bulbos-us Masc. sg. endings –us Bulbous Buttercup Athae-a hirsut-a Fem. sg. endings –a Rough Marsh-mallow Gerani-um pusill-um Neut. sg. endings –um Small-flowered Crane’s-bill Oxal-is exil-is Fem. sg. endings –is Least Yellow-sorrel

In many cases, however, the gender-number endings are not at all similar. We have already mentioned feminine tree names, where despite the agreement in gender and number, the word- endings look very different from each other. Here are some more examples of apparent mismatches:

Ranuncul-us acr-is Masc. sg. endings -us/-is Meadow Buttercup Senecio vulgari-is Masc. sg. endings -io/-is Groundsel Malv-a sylvestr-is Fem. sg. endings -a/-is Common Mallow Mercurial-is annu-a Fem. sg. endings -is/-a Annual Mercury Cirsi-um arvens-e Neut. sg. endings -um/-e Creeping thistle Eriger-on canadens-is Neut. sg. endings -on/-is Canadian Fleabane Gali-um aparin-e Neut. sg. endings -um/-e Cleavers

In these examples,theendings ofthepaired words may differ in form for avariety of reasons.

Declensions or groups of nouns and adjectives

One of the most common explanations is that the noun and its accompanying adjective belong to two different groups (declensions) in Latin, each group having its own individual set of word- endings. There are five distinct groups/declensions of nouns in Latin, summarised by Gledhill (p.35). Gledhill also charts twelve ofthe most frequent patterns of adjectival endings (p. 37).

Thus thenoun Ranunculus belongs to the second group or declension, where the basic masculine singular form ends in –us. The adjective acris belongs to the third group or declension of adjectives in Gledhill’s list, and its basic masculine singular form ends in –is. So thetwo words agree in number and gender, but the endingsthat mark these categories differ in shape.

Case Marking

12 In addition to the fact that nouns and adjectives may belong to different groups with distinct sets of word-endings, there are other reasons for seemingly mismatched endings in our examples above. Latin nouns and adjectives are not only marked for Number and Gender (and a paired noun and adjective must agree in these two categories), but they are also marked for Case.

“Case” refersto the formthat a noun takes according to its grammatical role in a clause/sentence. Thus, a noun in the subject role will take one form, the same noun in the direct object role will take another form, and in the possessive role it will take yet another. If the noun is qualified by an adjective, then the adjective will have to agree with its noun in case, so it will appear in its corresponding subject, direct object, or possessive form.

Thesethree cases arethe onesthat you aremost likely to encounter in plant names. Thetechnical names forthem are:

Nominative Case (subject role) Accusative Case (direct object role) Genitive Case (possessive role)

Like number and gender, case is also encoded in the endings of words. So in the form Ranunculus, the little ending –us carries a heavy load: it signals number (singular), gender (masculine) and case (subject role, therefore nominative case). Furthermore, each group (declension) of nouns and adjectives has its own set of number-gender-case endings. This sounds complicated, but in fact in botanical Latin you are likely to come across only a limited range of possible endings, and these should soon become fairly familiar.

In our sample of Latin species names,thenoun in initialposition, and its epithet wherethis is an adjective, will be in the subject or nominative form.

Ranunculus acris Meadow buttercup ‘Little-frog’ ‘acrid, sharp’ Noun masc. sg. Adj. masc. sg. Subject (nominative) Subject (nominative)

When the epithet consists not of an adjective, but of another noun, there are two possible structures:

(i) Two nouns in apposition e.g. Ranunculus ficaria Lesser Celandine ‘little-frog’ ‘small-fig’ Noun masc. sg. Noun fem. sg. Subject (nominative) Subject (nominative)

(ii) Two nouns in a possessive relationship e.g. Primula veris Cowslip ‘little-firstling’ ‘of-the spring’ Noun fem. sg. Noun neut. sg. Subject (nominative) Possessive (genitive) of ver ‘spring’

13 Pilosella officinarum Mouse-ear Hawkweed ‘Little-hairy-thing’ ‘of-apothecaries’ shops’ Noun fem. sg. Noun fem. pl. Subject (nominative) Possessive (genitive) pl. of officina

Notice that wheretwo nouns are in apposition as in (i), they both have nominative case, but they may differ in gender and/or in number. If the two nouns are in a possessive relationship, as in (ii), then by definition they differ in case, and may also be different in gender and number.

Sometimes, case marking will exist within a compound word that forms one part of a species name, as in the epithet bursa-pastoris: Capsella bursa -pastoris Shepherd’s-purse ‘little-box’ ‘purse’ ‘of-shepherd’ Noun, fem. sg. Noun, fem.sg. Noun. masc. sg. Subject (nominative) Subject (nom.) Possessive (genitive)

To summarise, species names composed of [noun + adjective] exhibit grammatical agreement between their two components. In cases where both components of the name are nouns [noun + noun], there appears to be no grammatical agreement in operation (except occasionally within a compound word) - andthis lack of agreement applies to all [noun + noun] constructions, whether the second noun is nominative or genitive in case.

Comparative and superlative adjectives

One final note about adjectival epithets: these sometimes occur in their comparative forms (bigger, taller, thinner, etc.) or superlative forms (biggest, tallest, longest, etc.). One of the most common patterns of comparative and superlative adjectival forms is set out below:

Masc. Fem. Neuter Meaning Long-us long-a long-um long Long-ior long-ior long-ius longer Long-issimus long-issima long-issimum longest

Examples of epithets in the comparative and superlative forms are seen below:

Fraxinus excelsior Ash ‘Ash tree’ ‘higher’

Iris foetidissima Stinking Iris ‘Rainbow’ ‘most stinking’

Ailanthus altissima Tree of Heaven ‘Thing-which- ‘tallest’ reaches-heaven’

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