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binomial nomenclature, biological recording, biological records, Dr Mary Gillham, scientific names, SEWBReC, volunteering
A snippet from my volunteer work on the ‘Dedicated Naturalist’ Project, helping to decipher and digitise, record and publicise the life’s work of naturalist extraordinaire, Dr Mary Gillham.
When project officer Al Reeve sent round his monthly volunteer newsletter, he attached this image of the many and varied scientific names we volunteers have been typing up from Dr Mary Gillham’s records. It makes a pretty picture but these things are the stuff of volunteer nightmares! Seriously, what was Linnaeus thinking when he invented binomial nomenclature?
Take, for example, the Eurasian wren, a delicate and tiny bird but its scientific name, Troglodytes troglodytes, makes it sounds like a huge stomping dinosaur. Admittedly, the double-barrel names are easier to remember. There’s Pica pica the Eurasian magpie, Buteo buteo the Common buzzard and Anser anser the Greylag goose.
Troglodytes troglodytes, Anser anser and Turdus philomelos
I feel sorry for the rather unfortunately named Turdus family of true thrushes. There are more than 50 family members, with names like Turdus pilaris the Fieldfare, Turdus merula the Blackbird, and Turdus philomelos the melodic Song Thrush.
Then there are the plants with girls’ names, or should that be girls with plant names? Whenever I type Prunella (as in Prunella vulgaris, the herb Selfheal) I always think of Prunella Scales, the actress who played John Cleese’s exceedingly patient wife in Fawlty Towers, and, though it’s not spelt the same, Silene dioica, the pretty wildflower Red campion, reminds me of singer Celine Dion. And there are plenty more: Veronica, Iris, Lotus, Viola …
Then there are the misnomers. You might quite reasonably expect names beginning with Trifolium (tri = three, folio = leaf) to have three leaves, except that plants are often not true to their names: witness Trifolium repens, which can, if you’re lucky, be a four leaf clover! Or there’s Paris quadrifolia, the supposedly four-leaf Herb Paris (shown above), which can have from 5 to 8 leaves.
It’s enough to drive a volunteer to drink, so I’ll end with my favourite cocktail, Sambucus nigra. Cheers!
You can follow our progress with this project on Facebook and on Twitter. A website will follow soon.
earthstar 
I have a fascination with the workings of the minds of those that named things ‘scientifically’ too. Some seem logical enough, but as you say, others boggle the mind. Prunella is derived from the Latin prunum, meaning ‘purple, so fits Self-heal, but purpe Dunnock? Perhaps the name came to mind after seeing one following a few shot of Sambuca?
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He he he … I like the way your mind works!
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Is Sambucus Nigra a cocktail? I have that growing alongside my stream.
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Don’t go trying to drink it, Joyce. It was a play on the word Sambuca, the Italian liqueur.
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I haven’t heard of Sambuca, Annie. I think I have been missing out on something here 😉
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Oddly enough we discovered today that Prunella is not only the genus name for Selfheal but also the Dunnock too (Prunella modularis). Why? Some ancestral plant-bird link? Yet to work that out…
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Sounds like another blog in the making … 🙂
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While they won’t have changed in her lifetime (at least, I hope not that quickly), I wonder if plants with 3-leaf names and so on, may have originally had that actual – stable – number? Or perhaps putting the latin equivalent of “generally has three leaves but might have up to five” would just have been too long to remember!
I agree with you on the wren and thrush names. What a handicap (or should that be clawicap?).
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You’re right, they probably didn’t change much in Mary’s lifetime but we do find many have changed since she wrote her lists. And it’s now, with the advent of DNA testing, that things are changing more than ever before.
Clawicap … hahaha!
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