Greek Orthography in Scientific Names

Abstract

IT is difficult, as correspondents in NATURE have noted, to preserve orthography in scientific names derived from the Greek. A good example of the confusion which has been allowed to become inevitable occurs in the similarity of the generic title of two very dissimilar shrubs. Chionanthus Virginica has been named from —snow—because of the masses of white blossom it bears at midsummer; while Chinionanthus fragrans, flowering in midwinter, ought to be written Cheimonanthus, from , winter. To each of these Greek generic names a Latin adjective has been tacked, which serves to distinguish the species, but may offend the scholar.