Plant Nomenclature

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smiln32 Oklahoma City, OK(Zone 7a) Aug 06, 2002

Neat site that specifies what the botanical names actually stand for.

For example, barbatus - barbed, bearded latus - broad, wide

http://www.msnla.org/sec4.htm

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Baa Aug 06, 2002

Hi Smilin

Good site! Have you visited the Botanary here on DG? http://plantsdatabase.com/botanary/

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Terry Murfreesboro, TN(Zone 7a) Aug 06, 2002

That is a pretty good site - here are a couple others I regularly refer to:

http://www.winternet.com/~chuckg/dictionary.html (I haven't been able to make their search tool function correctly, but they've broken them down into chunks that are pretty manageable to scan for something, and it's a good list.)

http://www.plantapalm.com/wianame.htm (pretty good for tropicals)

http://www.geocities.com/poaceae99/DictionaryA-D.html
and
http://www.geocities.com/gdekinder/index_english.htm

And if that's not enough to make you think I'm a total plant geek, I must confess: I find myself turning regularly (daily, several times a day?) to my newly-acquired set of gently used Greystone Press plant encyclopedias (Aimee, have I thanked you lately for the tip-off??? They are great - it's probably the best $20 investment I've made in a long while.)

The reason I have and use so many resources? As Baa mentioned, we put together Botanary a while back, and it currently has more than 6,000 genus and species names, with pronunciations guides and definitions. And almost daily, someone adds a plant that needs a listing in Botanary. Or I discover one we missed earlier.

We created Botanary because - as many of us discover - you can find sites that have pronunciation, but not the meaning of names. Or they may specialize in the etymology of succulent names, or tropicals, etc. Or sites that "hit the high notes" on a broader scale, but don't have many of the more off-the-beaten-path names.)

So the goal with Botanary is to:
a) help gardeners who want to know why a plant bears the name it does; and
b) give them confidence to pronounce the botanical name aloud; and
c) be both indepth and broad so users don't become frustrated with a limited resource.

As you add plants to the PDB, if you come across one that doesn't have the pronunciation and "more info" link come up automatically, you can add the information to Botanary if you'd care to.

Just click on the link to it, then scroll down to where it says "add a new term".

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