Two Latin words, written in italics, with a cabalistic abbreviation set after them, are a stumbling block on the page to the reader unaccustomed to scientific lore. He resents botanical names and demands to know the tree’s name “in plain English.” Trees have both common and scientific names, and each has its use. Common names were applied to important trees by people, the world over, before science was born. Many trees were never noticed by anybody until botanists discovered and named them. They may never get common names at all.
A name is a description reduced to its lowest terms. It consists usually of a surname and a descriptive adjective : Mary Jones, white oak, Quercus alba. Take the oaks, for example, and let us consider how they got their names, common and scientific. All acorn-bearing trees are oaks. They are found in Europe, Asia and America. Their usefulness and beauty have impressed people. The Britons called them by a word which in our modern speech is oak, and as they came to know the different kinds, they added a descriptive word to the name of each. But “plain English” is not useful to the Frenchman. Chêne is his name for the acorn trees. The German has his Eichenbaum, the Roman had his Quercus, and who knows what the Chinaman and the Hindoo in far Cathay or the American Indian called these trees? Common names made the trouble when the Tower of Babel was building.
Latin has always been the universal language of scholars. It is dead, so that it can be depended upon to remain unchanged in its vocabulary and in its forms and usages. Scientific names are exact, and remain unchanged, though an article or a book using them may be translated into all the modern languages. The word Quercus clears away difficulties. French, English, German hearers know what trees are meant—or they know just where in books of their own language to find them described.
The abbreviation that follows a scientific name tells who first gave the name. “Linn.” is frequently noticed, for Linnæus is authority for thousands of plant names.
Two sources of confusion make common names of trees unreliable: The application of one name to several species, and the application of several names to one species. To illustrate the first: There are a dozen ironwoods in American forests. They belong, with two exceptions, to different genera and to at least five different botanical families. To illustrate the second: The familiar American elm is known by at least seven local popular names. The bur oak has seven. Many of these are applied to other species. Three of the five native elms are called water elm; three are called red elm; three are called rock elm. There are seven scrub oaks. Only by mentioning the scientific name can a writer indicate with exactness which species he is talking about. The unscientific reader can go to the botanical manual or cyclopedia and under this name find the species described.
In California grows a tree called by three popular names leatherwood, slippery elm and silver oak. Its name is Fremontia. It is as far removed from elms and oaks as sheep are from cattle and horses. But the names stick. It would be as easy to eradicate the trees, root and branch, from a region as to persuade people to abandon names they are accustomed to, though they may concede that you have proved these names incorrect, or meaningless, or vulgar. Nicknames like nigger pine, he huckleberry, she balsam and bull bay ought to be dropped by all people who lay claim to intelligence and taste.
With all their inaccuracies, common names have interesting histories, and the good ones are full of helpful suggestion to the learner. Many are literal translations of the Latin names. The first writers on botany wrote in Latin. Plants were described under the common name, if there was one; if not, the plant was named. The different species of each group were distinguished by the descriptions and the drawings that accompanied them. Linnæus attempted to bring the work of botanical scholars together, and to publish descriptions and names of all known plants in a single volume. This he did, crediting each botanist with his work. The “Species Plantarum,” Linnæus’s monumental work, became the foundation of the modern science of botany, for it included all the plants known and named up to the time of its publication. This was about the middle of the eighteenth century.
The vast body of information which the “Species Plantarum” contained was systematically arranged. All the different species in one genus were brought together. They were described, each under a number; and an adjective word, usually of some marked characteristic, was written in as a descriptive marginal index.
After Linnæus’s time botanists found that the genus name in combination with this marginal word made a convenient exact means of designating the plant. Thus Linnæus became the acknowledged originator of the binomial (two-name) system of nomenclature, now in use in all sciences. It is a delightful coincidence that while Linnæus was engaged on his great work, North America, that vast new field of botanical exploration, was being traversed by another Swedish scientist. Peter Kalm sent his specimens and his descriptive notes to Linnæus, who described and named the new plants in his book. The specimens swelled the great herbarium at the University of Upsala.
Among trees unknown to science before are the Magnolia, named in honour of the great French botanist, Magnol. Robinia, the locust, honours another French botanist, Robin, and his son. Kalmia, the beautiful mountain laurel, immortalises the name of the devoted explorer who discovered it. Linnæa, the little twin flower of the same mountains, is the one which the great botanist loved best.
It is inevitable that duplication of names attend the work of the early scientists, isolated from each other, and far from libraries and herbaria. Anyone discovering a plant he believed to be unknown to science published a description of it in some scientific journal. If someone else had described it at an earlier date, the fact became known in the course of time. The name earliest published is retained, and the later one is dropped to the rank of a synonym. If the name has been used before to describe some other species in the same genus, a new name must be supplied. In the “Cyclopedia of Horticulture” the sugar maple is written : Acer saccharum, Marsh. (Acer saccharinum, Wang. Acer barbatum, Michx.)” This means that the earliest name give this tree by a botanist was that of Marshall. Wangheimer and Michaux are therefore thrown out; the names given by them are among the synonyms.
Our cork elm was until recently called “Ulmus racemosa, Thomas.” The discovery that the name racemosa was given long ago to the cork elm of Europe discredited it for the American tree. Mr. Sargent substituted the name of the author, and it now stands “Ulmus Thomasi, Sarg.” Occasionally a generic name is changed. The old generic name becomes the specific name. Box elder was formerly known as “Negundo aceroides, Mœnch.” It is changed back to “Acer Negundo, Linn.” On the other hand, the tan-bark oak, which is intermediate in character between oaks and chestnuts, has been taken by Professor Sargent in his Manual, 1905, out of the genus Quercus and set in a genus by itself. From “Quercus densiflora, Hook. and Arn.,” it is called “Pasania densiflora, Sarg.,” the specific name being carried over to the new genus.
About one hundred thousand species of plants have been named by botanists. They believe that one-half of the world’s flora is covered. Trees are better known than less conspicuous plants. Fungi and bacteria are just coming into notice. Yet even among trees new species are constantly being described. Professor Sargent described 567 native species in his “Silva of North America,” published 1892-1900. His Manual, 1905, contains 630. Both books exclude Mexico. The silva of the tropics contains many unknown trees, for there are still impenetrable tracts of forest.
The origin of local names of trees is interesting. History and romance, music and hard common sense are in these names—likewise much pure foolishness. The nearness to Mexico brought in the musical piñon and madroña in the Southwest. Pecanier and bois d’arc came with many other French names with the Acadians to Louisiana. The Indians had many trees named, and we wisely kept hickory, waahoo, catalpa, persimmon and a few others of them.
Woodsmen have generally chosen descriptive names which are based on fact and are helpful to learners. Botanists have done this, too. Bark gives the names to shagbark hickory, striped maple and naked wood. The colour names white birch, black locust, blue beech. Wood names red oak, yellow-wood and white-heart hickory. The texture names rock elm, punk oak and soft pine. The uses name post oak, canoe birch and lodgepole pine.
The tree habit is described by dwarf juniper and wee spruce. The habitat, by swamp maple, desert willow and side alder. The range, by California white oak and Georgia pine. Sap is characterised in sugar maple, sweet gum, balsam fir and sweet birch. Twigs are indicated in clammy locust, cotton gum, winged elm. Leaf linings are referred to in silver maple, white poplar and white basswood. Colour of foliage, in grey pine, blue oak and golden fir. Shape of leaves, in heart-leaved cucumber tree and ear-leaved umbrella. Resemblance of leaves to other species, in willow oak and parsley haw. The flowers of trees give names to tulip tree, silver-bell tree and fringe tree. The fruit is described in big-cone pine, butternut, mossy-cup oak and mock orange.
Many trees retain their classical names, which have become the generic botanical ones, as acacia, ailanthus and viburnum. Others modify these slightly, as pine from Pinus, and poplar from Populus. The number of local names a species has depends upon the notice it attracts and the range it has. The loblolly pine, important as a lumber tree, extends along the coast from New Jersey to Texas. It has twenty-two nicknames.
The scientific name is for use when accurate designation of a species is required; the common name for ordinary speech. ” What a beautiful Quercus alba!” sounds very silly and pedantic, even if it falls on scientific ears. Only persons of very shallow scientific learning use it on such informal occasions.
Let us keep the most beautiful and fitting among common names, and work for their general adoption. There are no hard names once they become familiar ones. Nobody hesitates or stumbles over chrysanthemum and rhododendron, though these sonorous Greek derivatives have four syllables. Nobody asks what these names are “in plain English.”