Gender of Anigozanthos

[GORDON RUTTER]

The following was sent to me by a colleague whom I passed the
appropriate request on to.

Gordon Rutter
Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh


Greek nouns keep their original gender when used in botanical Latin;
when it's a compound of two or more word-elements the gender of the
last element is followed. In this case the last element is -anthos so
it has to be neuter, NOT masculine.

It is a second declension noun in Greek. What usually happens (but
not in this case) is that Greek 2nd declension -os becomes -us,
giving -i in the genitive singular. My opinion would be to use -i,
i.e. Anigozanthi. Stearn amazingly doesn't say how one should decline
nouns ending in -anthos (rather than -anthus). I would certainly NOT
make them third declension masculine like flos, floris.

Any more scholarly opinion that conflicts with mine will be
gratefully received!

Best wishes


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Dr Robert Mill
Flora of Arabia Project

E-mail: robert        Ext. 240 or 449
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