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.