From the application level, the names of plants are mainly divided into scientific applications (scientific names) and daily applications (common names).
Let’s start with natural science. A very important foundation of natural science is taxonomy. In short, the work of taxonomy is to classify species known in nature into a reasonable arrangement and number. Use simple They are classified according to the precise classification standards of the phylum, order, family, genus and species. Take the sweet potato (sweet potato), the most common plant. The following is its classification position in the scientific community:
Earth Terrae [Three Domain System]
Eukaryotic Domain Eukarya [Three Domain System]
Plant Kingdom Plantae [Three-domain system]
Angiospermae [Traditional system]
Magnoliopsida [Cronquist system]
Asteridae [Cronquist system]
Solanales [Cronquist system]
Convolvulaceae [Cronquist system]
SubFam. Convolvuloideae [Cronquist system Convolvulaceae ]
Trib. Ipomoeeae [Convolvulaceae in Cronquist system]
Ipomoea [Convolvulaceae in Cronquist system]
Ipomoea group Ipomoea Sect. Batatas [Convolvulaceae of Cronquist system]
Ipomoea batatas [Convolvulaceae of Cronquist system]
Such a long list of information can be used to classify a plant The name is given accurately. Ipomoea batatas is the international name given by botanists to the sweet potato plant. It is expressed in Latin that is no longer in circulation, which is the Latin scientific name. The Latin scientific name is theoretically unique, but there are also some plants distributed in different countries. At first, information was not so circulated, and communication was very inconvenient. So a botanist in this country published this plant, and another botanist in that country published it. Scientists also published this plant. They all thought it was a new species, so they used different Latin names to name it. Now that the information is transparent and developed, they looked at the specimens and found that this plant had already been grown before them. It was published in other countries, so the names published by these two botanists later became synonyms. Synonyms indicate that the plant is recognized by this name, but for the convenience of communication, it is now uniformly called an accepted name, which is the Latin scientific name accepted by the world. The corresponding sweet potato family name here is Convolvulaceae (Convolvulaceae), and the genus name is Ipomoea (Ipomoea).
Of course, it is such a long name, and it is Latin. There are not many countries in the world that use Latin, and there are even fewer countries that understand Latin. It is impossible for everyone to use Latin. We in China have always used Chinese. , so the plants themselves have some names passed down by common people with different languages ??and cultures, also called common names.
Different countries such as English, Malay, and Japanese also have corresponding names for local plants in local languages. Let’s not mention them for the moment. Taking sweet potato as an example, there are the following different names among Chinese common names:
Sweet potato, sweet potato, white potato, sweet potato, sweet potato, agoose amutatu-tumusupanru, sweet potato, sweet potato, sweet potato, sweet potato, red yam, sweet potato vine, golden potato, vine yam, yam, sweet potato, sweet potato, sweet potato, sweet potato, jade pillow potato, potato, taro Red potato, white potato, sweet potato, vine, red potato vine, rice potato, and rice potato. So many names actually refer to the same thing. The same name refers to different things in different regions. These names can be called aliases or common names.
There are also some names based on specific applications. For example, sweet potatoes sprout and grow leaves to make small potted plants. The bosses in the gardening industry call them golden leaves and love leaves (heart-shaped leaves) for the sake of nice names. ) etc. Such names are also called gardening names. Of course, some woods also have names in the wood industry, such as rosewood in the mahogany category, also known as huanghuali, Dalbergia rosewood, and names in the traditional Chinese medicine community, etc.
In summary, even for the same plant, the names in different fields may be different. It is recommended to use the scientific name as the basis, which can be used directly or simply adjusted. Do not change it beyond recognition and affect the plant. Use communication.
By Southeast Asian plant nomenclature worker, naughty scholar