THE NAMES OF TREES. Two Latin words, written in italics, with a cabalistic abbrevia tion 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 dif ferent kinds, they added a descriptive word to the name of each. But "plain English" is not useful to the Frenchman. Chene is his name for the acorn trees. The German has his Eichen baum, 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 Linnmus is authority for thousands of plant names.
Two sources of confusion make common names of trees un reliable: 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 ap plied 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 huckle berry, 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. Linnzeus attempted to bring the work of botanical scholars to gether, 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," Linmeus's monu mental 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.