OPTIMA Newsletter 38

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Publications names in modern language are used by many, perhaps increasingly so, and lists such as the present French-Latin and Latin-French “dictionary” for Belgian plants correspond to a real need. Jacques Lambinon in his introduction makes the important distinction, too often ignored, between “popular” and “learned” common language names. The former are primarily the domain of linguistics and ethnographic studies, the latter are often those used in school floras. Surprisingly, there are countries in which there is no tradition for the second category, such as Greece, Turkey and perhaps Spain; whereas the “learned” names have their stronghold in countries such as France, Britain, and most prominently in the German language domain. It would be interesting to examine, in an historical perspective, why this is so. It would also be worthwhile to explore the origin of this, so to say, parallel nomenclature. The earliest source of German “learned” plant names of which I am aware is Carl Ludwig Willdenow’s “Species plantarum” (1797- 1810), where they are consistently given. They appear to be German translations of the Latin name, and their purpose may well have been, not so much to be used for communication but to explain to the reader the meaning of the Latin names. However this may be, I am convinced that the “learned” common language names of plants have an important function, and I would encourage authors of Floras of countries lacking them to establish their tradition. W.G. 137. 136BMoustapha NEHME – Dictionnaire étymologique de la flore du Liban. Noms scientifiques et leur étymologie. Noms français, anglais et arabes. Noms arabes translittérés. – Librairie du Liban, Beyrouth, 2000. 368 + 48 pages; hard cover with dust jacket. 138. 137BMoustapha NEHMÉ – Etymogical dictionary of Syrian flora. Scientific names and their etymology. Arabic, English and French names. – Librairie du Liban, Beirut, 2008 (ISBN 978-9953-86-410-5). 456 pages; hard cover with dust jacket. Both volumes are of similar layout and widely overlapping content, to the extent to which the floras of the two countries, Lebanon and Syria, coincide. Syria, with its much larger surface area, has a somewhat richer flora: 3109 species, as compared to 2607 for Lebanon. The numbered entries are 3949 and 3390, respectively. The numerical difference between species and entries corresponds to the number of genera (each genus having its own entry), which means that no infraspecific taxa are mentioned. As the title implies, the books have a dual function. The first is etymological. For each generic name and specific epithet the derivation is given. The etymological information is carefully researched, detailed, and I found it to be very useful. Besides, its applicability is by no means geographically as restricted as one might rashly conclude from the book titles: the area of many genera is large, and as to epithets, the same have often been used in other genera all around the world (as there is an alphabetical index to epithets at the end, the information can be easily found, irrespective of genus). When perusing the book, I immediately found lots of information of which I was unaware, e.g., that Allium derives from a Celtic word, Carthamus from Aramaic, Datura from Sanskrit, Marrubium from Hebrew, and Taraxacum from Persian. The books’ second purpose is to serve as a polyglot (Latin-French-English-Arabic) dictionary of pant names. As is usual for well designed polyglot dictionaries, translation is possible from any of these languages into any other, e.g., from French to English or vice versa, by using the language indexes at the end, which refer to the entry number. Of course, it is the Arabic names that are most valuable. I know of no other comparably complete, botanically reliable source of such (72) OPTIMA Newsletter No. 38 2009
terms. In the book for Lebanon, Arabic names are given twice, in Arabic script and transliterated into Latin script; in the Syrian book (perhaps because in that country the Latin alphabet is scarcely used) the second is omitted. At species level, the Arabic designations are as a rule not “popular”, vernacular names, but are of the “learned” type, i.e., they are translations of the Latin binomial into Arabic. They are therefore fairly precise as to their meaning and provide a valuable standard for communication without resorting to the perhaps unfamiliar Latin scientific names. W.G. 139. 138BD. ERSHAD Festschrifts (ed.) – Memorial issue dedicated to the 100th birthday of late Univ.-Prof. Dr. Karl Heinz Rechinger. [Rostaniha (ISSN 1608-4306), 7, Suppl. 2.] – Iranian Research Institute of Plant Protection, Tehran, 2006. [4] + II + 402 + [4] pages, black-and-white illustrations, maps and tables; paper. The inventor, editor and principal author of the monumental “Flora Iranica”, Karl Heinz Rechinger, died in 1998, aged 92. The botanists of Iran, a country where his memory is venerated more than anywhere else (certainly more than in his home country), had the brilliant and most appropriate idea to honour him with a posthumous Festschrift on the occasion of the 100 th anniversary of his birth. He had received more than one such homage during his lifetime, each of which he thoroughly enjoyed, and he would certainly have enjoyed reading the present one. 37 botanists, in their large majority Iranian, have contributed 24 papers to this volume. All articles have an Iranian subject, and in their majority they are systematic and floristic, but contributions from the fields of micromorphology and anatomy, karyology, molecular taxonomy, phytogeography, vegetation science, nomenclature and applied bot- Publications any are also present. There are 5 papers on liliiflorous families (4 on Allium alone) and 14 on dicot groups: Boraginaceae (2), Compositae (3), Cruciferae (1), Labiatae (1), Leguminosae (3), Moraceae (1), Rosaceae (1), and Rubiaceae (2). Descriptions of 11 new species and one subspecies are included, among them Asperula oppositifolia subsp. rechingeri, Astragalus heinzii, and Cousinia caroli-henrici, all dedicated to Rechinger. Of special note are Iranshahr’s inventory of new taxa with names typified by Rechinger’s specimens from the Iranian highlands (no less than 566, 266 of them from Iran); and Akhani’s statistical analysis of the 176 issues of “Flora Iranica” published by 2006, with 9977 species treated on 10065 printed pages and illustrated on 6077 plates (204 of them in colour). One further volume has been published in the meantime (item 36, above), and three or four are still in the pipeline, but updating Akhani’s figures at the end will be easy, now that the main inventory has been done. W.G. Reprints 140. 139BH. Walter LACK – Jardin de la Malmaison. Ein Garten für Kaiserin Josephine. – Prestel, München, 2004 (ISBN 3-7913-3050-0). 327 pages, 20 colour photographs, 142 facsimiles in colour, 1 in black-and-white; cloth in cardboard box. A further highlight in the famed series of Walter Lack’s sumptuous volumes (see also item 128, above), this time concerning Napoleonic France – although with a symbolic Austrian touch, as we shall see. It is more than a mere reprint, and at the same time, less. Less, because the descriptive texts accompanying the 64 plates – coloured stipple engravings based on paintings by the great Redouté, beautifully reproduced in one 2009 OPTIMA Newsletter No. 38 (73)
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