[Alpine-l] Vernacular Names. Was: Maori Plant NamesIn so many cases I cannot but wonder, which came first. I suspect the Latin name was adopted from the common name.
Bill Plummer Southern Tier of New York Subject: Re: [Alpine-l] Vernacular Names. Was: Maori Plant Names When I was in my teens and saw the Britton & Brown Flora (which includes sometimes long lists of vernacular names), I decided that the comparatively clean, neat botanical names were the way to go. As a result, vernacular names (as did television) dropped out of my life, pretty much for good (meaning good in the temporal sense, but maybe in the judgmental sense, too). Botanical names have been second nature to me for so long that I'm largely unaware that there might be an alternative. This sometimes has amusing consequences. Among my friends I count a couple, one of whom is an enthusiastic and knowledgeable gardener and the other is a photographer whose grasp of plant names was probably honed "on the job" during their partnership - and it is a grasp which extends only to common names. The photographer once chided me for speaking "botanical Latin" exclusively, and pointed out that he hardly ever knew what I was talking about until his partner later explained. Then the photographer saw something I had written which used a common name. Soon he was buzzing around telling everyone "he used a common name, he used a common name". There have been times when my ignorance of vernacular names has stopped a conversation in its tracks. I was using a botanical name, and he was using a vernacular name. Were we talking about the same thing? He knew no botanical names, and I was on very shaky ground with the vernacular names: end of conversation (but luckily not end of friendship). I've kept hand-written garden diaries since about 1970. Family members who have peeped into these diaries have spread the notion that they are written in Latin. They're not (although my penmanship might add to the illusion that it is). Now I'm at the other end of life, and in retrospect do I regret the decision to focus on botanical names? I do a little, but not much. I still eschew vernacular names because of the untidiness factor. But I'm a lot less naive now about the once seemingly faultless practice of using botanical names. Botanical names in their way can be just as deceptively indecisive as vernacular names, but for reasons dissimilar to the problems with vernacular names. There is also the element of the audience to whom one speaks when using botanical names vs. the audience one speaks to when using vernacular names. The vernacular name people are apt to be much more accepting. That can be read in different ways: "they're being nice to me" or "they could care less, it makes no difference to them" or a neutral "that's just the way they are". The botanical name people are apt to be much more captious, confident (sometimes misleadingly so) or, best of all, aware of the many considerations which have to be resolved before a botanical name can be applied with that sometimes elusive quality, certainty. It's this last aspect - the resolving of the uncertainties - which intrigues me at this stage of my life. I've nearly come full circle and now believe that botanical names are, in their way, as untidy as vernacular names are in their way. It's just that the uncertainties are engendered by circumstances of vastly different levels of sophistication. Jim McKenney ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ Alpine-l mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.science.uu.nl/mailman/listinfo/alpine-l
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