Common Names for Vascular Plants

[John McNeill]

> Statistics Netherlands and others seeking common names for vascular
> plants may be interested in an index that is newly available both in
> book and electronic format:

Book Format:
> Brako, Lois \ Rossman, Amy Y. \ Farr, David F.
>  Scientific and common names of 7,000 vascular plants in the United
> States.  St. Paul, Minn.: APS Press, American Phytopathological
> Society, 1995.  295 p.  ISBN 089054171X

> OR, TELNET fungi.ars-grin.gov

While electronic access to common names is clearly a great convenience,
recent discussion of this topic, particularly that from the Netherlands
group, seems to have overlooked the "classical" literature on the
subject.

For common names in the major European languages, the following has the
most extensive coverage, particularly of European species and species of
importance in the economy of European countries:

Gerth van Wik, H. L. 1911-1916.  A dictionary of plant-names.  2 vols. The
Hague, Netherlands.  (1971 facsimile edition, published by Asher).

For economic plants, a useful source of multilingual common names is
Uphof's Dictionary of Economic Plants.


John McNeill

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From: John McNeill, Director, Royal Ontario Museum, 100 Queen's Park,
      Toronto, Ontario, M5S 2C6, Canada.
      Tel.: 416-586-5639      Fax: 416-586-8044
      e-mail: johnm at rom.on.ca   (or: john at rom.on.ca)
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ÿÿ    Common Names for Vascular Plants                                        ge