IAS Aroid Quasi Forum

About Aroid-L
 This is a continuously updated archive of the Aroid-L mailing list in a forum format - not an actual Forum. If you want to post, you will still need to register for the Aroid-L mailing list and send your postings by e-mail for moderation in the normal way.

  Re: Info on Epipremnum spp.
From: "Wilbert Hetterscheid" hetter at worldonline.nl> on 2001.07.07 at 06:32:40(6971)
Although the word "perversion" is not something I would like to see used
against my arguments I will comment shortly: botanists are in the long run
"appointed" by the rest of the world to do a GOOD job and some botanists
(taxonomists) are required to inventory life's diversity and develop a
"language" with which we can communicate about the entities that make up
"life". Taxonomists have decided to use the dead language of Latin because
that doesn't change anymore as a result of the Romans being dead as well. I
think that when botanists have done a good job and are also judged by that,
they may as well ask the "employer" to listen to them and try to have faith
in what they're doing. I think using "pothos" after 200 years for the wrong
thing is not very smart because it DOES also generate confusion (see the
legal area where the term pothos has several meanings). Thus "common names"
sometimes have a negative effect on what has been thought out by botanists.
Botanists are perfectly right to focus attention to such cases and try to
improve the situation. That is something different than being perverted. How
about the word "geranium" for Pelargonium? NOT very smart.

I am not against common names (we also enter them in our cultivar database
on www.plantscope.nl
, where they can even be used as query arguments!) but I do not like the
ones that cause confusion.

BTW: if I may use this opprotunity: the database mentioned above does
contain quite some information on Anthurium cultivars and Spathiphyllum and
some more commercially succesfull aroid cultivars. It is not etirely
up-to-date and next week there will be a final big data-conversion, but it
may be fun to stroll a bit through it as "guest user", if you wish).

Wilbert

+More
Note: this is a very old post, so no reply function is available.