Happy new Year one and all. Whilst out and about on a frosty morn this Yellow Berried evergreen was one of the few pieces of presenting Botany . The leaves are...
Hi all, Traditional Seasonal Greetings to all. Colin, I think your Holly is an Ilex aquifolium or I. x altaclarensis cultivar, the "traditional" yellow berried...
Hi Darrel , many thanks for that ( As precise as ever) I shall revisit this hedging or maybe this year visit a few more garden centres to get up to speed with...
Dear All, rECOrd - the Local Record Centre for the Cheshire region (Cheshire, Halton, Warrington, Wirral and the old VC-58 'pan-handle' around Stockport) is...
Hello. New user here: I'm a geologist, but with side interests in plant taxonomy and classical texts (odd combo I realize, but what can I do?) My question: ...
"Plant Names Simplified" by A T Johnson and H A Smith has it as: "probably from Greek sialon, saliva, the gummy exudations on the stems which ward off...
Welcome to the group, Chuck. <<(odd combo I realize, but what can I do?)>> sounds perfectly sensible to me :-). Sadly I can't add anything to this, always...
RD Macleod, in "Key to the Names of British Plants" (Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, 1952), also suggests the derivation being from 'sialon' which is not much help in...
I think I like the note given in Fournier's "Quatre Flores de France": "Nom d'etymologie totalement inconnue, et par suite expliques de facons tres diverses" -...
Thank you to everyone who responded to my question about the generic name "Silene". Thank you to Gill (ryenats) for the encouragement regarding my profligate...
I know that my contribution is rather late for which I apologise. Some generic (and species?) names have been given because the taxonomist thought that they...
Silene was a drunken companion of Bacchus (Brewer's Dict of Phrase and Fable). An appropriate name for a plant that flowers overnight and the petals shrivel in...
Your reply was right on time. I had not considered the "it just sounds good" angle. I will have to think about this -- if I have not already spent too many...
If you read Stern, p283, his account of the Linnean Canons makes it quite clear Linnaeus (who, by all accounts was a pedant's pedant [and an autocrat and a...
Even Gledhill says " ' Torilis' - a meaningless name by Adanson." From the web - "Torilis Adans., Fam. Pl. 2: 99, 612 (1763); derivation unknown, Adanson...
... change ... The Greek Sialon is of course the original for the Latin Sialum (the umbellifer pepper-saxifrage, a plant I have never seen), a normal ...
Very true. Excellent points. I think I'm in over my head. (I can't read Swedish, so getting that deep into Linnaeus' sources would be impossible for me.) Thank...
It's not the language of Linnaeus' text (Latin, not Swedish) that would be a problem, but the fact that the references to his sources are often very ...
Hello, My scientific position on the South Downs National Park Official Position: Neutral As a scientist/writer, this is politics and is not really of my...
John, be fair to Dr Stearn. His "vocabulary" only contains words which might be used in botanical descriptions, not all the very large number of names. He...
Fair comment - I was really wanting to make the point that we currently lack a comprehensive "dictionary" of botanical Latin (I think !) - and there are older...
