How To Identify Plants At The Santa Rosa Plateau: Plant Names
Biggest problem with Latin names: the darn things keep changing.
Botanists tried to do two things with the name: identify a species and indicate the relationship of the species.
Thus every time we learn something new about species relationships, or a lumper or a splitter reorganizes a group of plants, new Latin names are given.
Thus about 1/3 of all the species in Southern California have had their name changed between 1974 and 1993. Some plant species have had 10 or 20 different names. But the Latin names still uniquely identify a species because they are never re-used.
Some Latin names are hard to say. But the nice thing is: there is no standard pronunciation. Pronounce them however you like!
http://tchester.org/srp/plants/how_to_id/9.html
Comments and feedback: Tom Chester
Last update: 16 October 2003.