The MGS Forum

Miscellaneous => Miscellaneous => Topic started by: Hilary on April 21, 2014, 09:11:06 AM

Title: Botanical names
Post by: Hilary on April 21, 2014, 09:11:06 AM

Talking of education
Today i identified a plant I snapped yesterday as
Cynara cardunculus .
 I wonder what the name means .
Could someone with some spare time give a few hints on reading plants proper names?

Title: Botanical names
Post by: John J on April 21, 2014, 01:06:33 PM

Hilary, Cynara is described as being the Latin name and cardunculus means resembling a small thistle.
William T Stearn's book 'Stearn's Dictionary of Plant Names for Gardeners' is a good source of information. If you want to go deeper into it he also wrote a book called 'Botanical Latin'.

Title: Botanical names
Post by: KatG on April 21, 2014, 04:21:04 PM

As a society with our headquarters in Greece it seems to me that it is high time we corrected the common misapprehension that botanical names are all Latin. In fact just as many, if not more, are of Greek origin, and according to my source Cynara is one of them.

Title: Botanical names
Post by: John J on April 21, 2014, 06:19:54 PM

My apologies, Katerina, in my reply I was quoting William Stearns and it seems that even the recognised experts can be mistaken. The genus name Cynara probably does come from the Greek kynara and not from the Latin. Personally I do not refer to plants as having Latin names, for the reason that you give, I always say botanical or scientific names.

Title: Botanical names
Post by: Hilary on April 22, 2014, 06:16:23 AM

John,
 Thanks for the titles of books regarding the scientific  names of plants.

Title: Botanical names
Post by: Alice on April 22, 2014, 11:04:32 AM

Quote

As a society with our headquarters in Greece it seems to me that it is high time we corrected the common misapprehension that botanical names are all Latin. In fact just as many, if not more, are of Greek origin, and according to my source Cynara is one of them.

As I understand, Linnaean binomial nomenclature uses Latin grammatical forms, but these can be based on words from other languages (most often Latin and Greek).

Title: Botanical names
Post by: Alice on April 22, 2014, 11:10:16 AM

Quote

Could someone with some spare time give a few hints on reading plants proper names?

Hilary, you might find the following interesting too.

http://www.winternet.com/~chuckg/dictionary.html (http://www.winternet.com/~chuckg/dictionary.html)

Title: Botanical names
Post by: KatG on April 23, 2014, 04:33:17 PM

Should this be a new topic?

I have a very useful little book called Plant Names Simplified - Their Pronunciation, Derivation and Meaning. Written by A.T. Johnson and H.A. Smith, originally published in 1931.

According to this Cynara comes from the Greek kyon.

Title: Re: Botanical names
Post by: Alisdair on April 23, 2014, 07:48:04 PM

Quite right, Katerina; well worth splitting this off as a new topic.
Thanks!