Books
List of Books starting with O
The meanings of generic names are fascinating and often
quite helpful in indicating some special morphological
feature, reminding one of the discoverer or of some ancient
Greek mythological story. The rules for their formation
are as follows "The name of a genus is a substantive in the
singular number or a word treated as such. It may be taken
from any source whatever and may even be composed
arbitrarily" (International Code of Botanical Nomenclature,
1961). Really one could not have a wider choice! The
code also recommends "Latin terminations as far as possible;
to avoid names not readily adaptable to the Latin tongue";
"scientific names of taxonomic groups are treated as Latin
regardless of origin". Indeed the great majority of nonpersonal
generic names are basically of Greek origin, and
quite frequently Greek words or word-parts are retained, eg.
hemi-, hypo-, -idium, -itis, stemon.