Bob, I would be reluctant to cite Rafinesque as an authority on anything but his own bizarre life - if even that. I keep an informal list of genera whose etymology has stumped me. The Count has supplied more than his share. Rafinesque, for those of you who don't know of him, was born in the late eighteenth century in Turkey of Italian parents. He wandered for a while, ended up here in the US, spent time in Kentucky and died in Philadelphia. Wherever he went he evidently saw abundant opportunities to exercise his taxonomic talents on living things and on inanimate things. I've read that he even classified the different types of thunder.
Jim McKenney
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