Hundreds of thousands of plants have been named, but there are still many names? Uncovering the "routine" of plant names

Naming plants is a science. I am Rong Ge from the China Science and Technology Museum. Welcome to Rong Ge's Naming Science. Compared to people's names, which often contain some expectations or sustenance, plant names more vividly reflect their characteristics. Today we will talk about the routines in plant names.

Some are named after the morphological characteristics of plants. For example, lentils, its pods and seeds are flat; spider plants, branches are drooping, hanging in the air; Victoria amazonica, because its leaves are the largest in the world among aquatic plants. You can also use a certain part of an animal to compare, which is more vivid, such as Monstera, Celosia, and Schlumbergera. Or it is named according to the color, smell or taste of the flowers, fruits, seeds, and rhizomes of plants. For example, mung beans, kumquats, Houttuynia cordata, Ailanthus altissima, sugar cane, bitter melon, and sour jujube... Intuitive enough!

There are also many names for plants based on their growth habits. Elaeagnus angustifolia and sea buckthorn grow in the sand, and kelp and seaweed grow on shallow sea rocks. Forsythia blooms early in spring, selfheal grows in spring but withers in summer, honeysuckle withers in autumn and then sprouts again, and holly remains evergreen in the cold winter. Roses bloom every month, and leeks bloom for a long time and can be harvested over and over again.

In addition to external characteristics, some plants are named according to their efficacy. For example, jelly grass is made by boiling the stems and leaves of jelly grass, adding rice milk and cooking it. After cooling, it becomes a gelatinous substance, which is the jelly for relieving summer heat! Does it look similar to burnt grass jelly? Yes, jelly grass powder is also called jelly grass and fairy jelly.

At this point, you will find that in different countries, or even in different regions of the same country, the names of plants may be different. For example, people in Northeast China call potatoes, people in Inner Mongolia call them yam eggs, and people in the northwest call them foreign potatoes. They may be very different in different regions and language environments, which is called synonyms. But the same name is not necessarily the same plant. For example, bitter vegetable may also refer to bitter mustard or nightshade; and papaya, is it the fruit papaya or the medicinal papaya of the Rosaceae family?

Whether it is the same thing with different names or the same name with different things, it is very inconvenient for botanical research and communication, and it is easy to cause confusion. Therefore, it is very necessary to give plants a scientific name, a name that is used uniformly throughout the world. At present, plant naming generally abides by the "International Code of Botanical Nomenclature" internationally. The naming rules adopt the binomial nomenclature proposed by the famous Swedish naturalist Linnaeus in his book "Species Plantarum" published in 1753.

Specifically, Linnaeus used two Latin words to form the scientific name of a plant. The first word is called the genus, which indicates the genus name of the plant. It is a noun and the first letter should be capitalized. The second word is the specific epithet, which is an adjective and is all lowercase. A complete Latin literary name must also be attached with the abbreviation of the namer's surname at the end.

This naming rule is very clever. First of all, we have to know the classification of plants, which follows the biological classification standards, namely kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, and species. Species is the most basic unit, and genus is one level above species. The first word in Linnaeus' binomial nomenclature is the genus, which represents which "genus" the plant belongs to. We can understand it as the "surname" in a person's name, which is equivalent to "family". The specific epithet is equivalent to the name after the surname, representing the "individual", which corresponds to the characteristics of this species, the most basic unit in the classification of plants. The specific epithet is generally an adjective that describes the characteristics of the species. For example, Glycyrrhiza glabra, its genus name is Glycyrrhiza glabra, and the specific epithet is smooth. In fact, this is not exactly the same as the common name we talked about at the beginning, but it can be regarded as similar in nature, reflecting the most specific morphological, habitual, regional and other characteristics of a certain plant.

Then let's take a look at the Latin name of agarwood. Looking directly at the specific epithet, it is translated as something related to wetlands, swamps and other environments, which corresponds to the growth habits of agarwood. This is indeed different from our naming perspective. You should know that it has long been recorded in the "Supplement to Compendium of Materia Medica" that "Xianrendong, also known as agarwood. ... Eat it with juice and rice flour to relieve hunger. Mountain people plant acres of it and sell it in summer." It can be seen that the artificial cultivation, food preparation and even sales of agarwood powder have existed since ancient times. It is said that foodies promote the development of civilization. It would be more reasonable to standardize and unify the naming of plants so that more foodies can enjoy it.