Not all nouns that end in -us are masculine in Latin. There is also a
feminine inflection which ends in -us, and many of the nouns that belong in
that inflection happen to be plants and trees, e.g. cornus, crataegus. The
"two ending" adjectives (-ensis, -ense) merge masculine and feminine, so if you
have a noun of ambiguous gender, and an adjective which suffers from the same
indisposition, you had better reach for your Latin grammar book quick!
And Bob, you can't say (in correct Latin), carpe plantem. -em is the
correct accusative ending for third declension feminine nouns, but planta is a
second declension noun, so it has to be carpe plantam.
I usually hate pedantries such as this posting, but you post when
something is in your area of expertise, and that's why I'm sounding off. No
offense intended; but really, if you want to be able to handle Latin
binommials, you have to have a passing acqauaintance with Latin noun and
adjective morphology. I once read an article on African violets, and how to
divide them when they get all bunched up. The author concluded: "e unum
pluribus!" thinking that all you had to do to reverse the meaning was to
reverse the word order. But word order in Latin is fairly free, possible
because the real work of the grammar is in the morphology of the words, not
their order. Correct way to say what she was trying to say is e uno pluri.
Then after you have the grammar solved, you have to confront how to
pronounce them...oi veh!. Allan Taylor_______________________________________________
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