Swedish botanist Karl von Linne (1707-1778) was the person who began scientific naming. Since almost all science in the 18th century was written in Latin, von Linne is also known by the Latin form of his name: Carolus Linnaeus. His system of scientific nomenclature is still in use today. In this system, the genus name is a noun and its first letter is always capitalized, while the species name is an adjective (a descriptive word) and is not capitalized. For example, you are a Homo sapiens, or "wise man," even if you are neither a man nor wise.

Each animal and plant has a scientific name that is recognized internationally. The Latin name can be understood by all, no matter whether an individual speaks Japanese, Spanish, German, or Russian. For example, the plant named Convallaria majalis is called a lily-of-the-valley in English, muguet in French, landysh in Russian, and Maiblume in German. But if you use the Latin name, this plant has the same name everywhere.

For example, Amorphophallus titanum is a Latin name that anyone from anywhere will be able to recognize as a certain species within a certain genus. Scientific names are always in two parts, the genus and the species. These two parts are often shown in italics or underlined because they may be considered a foreign language--Latin--rather than whatever other language is being used (in this case, English). Foreign words are often italicized.

I had a real hard time getting used to this; all of us are taught from our earliest years that names are always capitalized. Even my computer still tries to capitalize the species name. But it is not capitalized! The genus and the species may be used to describe an aspect of the plant or animal. For example, Amorphophallus means "deformed penis." We all know that these guys live up to their names. Sometimes the scientific name can be chosen to commemorate a person, such as A. hetterscheidii. Dr. Hetterscheid has described many of the species listed on the IAS site; hence A. hetterscheidii is named after him.

Sometimes, someone will describe a species but then another person later will assign that species to a different group or or give it a different name. There are many reasons why this might happen: a name may initially assigned incorrectly, or a species is described in one genus and later recognized as a member of a different genus. In these cases, the name(s) of the original author(s) are placed in parentheses, and the name(s) of the author(s) who "corrected" the mistake follow afterward.

Even when a species is named after an English person, the name is latinized by adding a suffix. An "i" is added if it is named after a male and an "ae" is used if it's named after a female.

A guy went out and found a new species; his name was Henry, hence the name A. henryi. A. sizemoreae Hett. is named after Mary Sizemore, another person who goes out on expeditions, finds and describes these different species and was honoured by having one named after her. Note the "ae" suffix added to the end of A. sizemoreae. If the species is to be named after a couple, or a band, then the ending would be "orum". If Ozzy Ozborne found a plant and wanted to name it after his family, the species would be named A. ozborneorum.

If you are emailing someone regarding Amorphophallus titanum, you need only write out the full name once and thereafter refer to it as A. titanum. If the person you are talking to already knows that you are obsessed with Amorphs, you may just use the species name and drop the "A." altogether. The last word in a species name is never abbreviated. I do call them Amorphs in this site, which is OK but not the greatest example; I am lazy when it comes to writing, what can I say. Many people commonly refer to Amorphophallus titanum as simply "titan."

The citation N.E.Br. is the internationally standardized abbreviation of the name of the botanist (Nicholas Edward Brown) who described Amorphophallus mossambicensis, it's not the place that the species occurs.

On the next page, I list some definitions of botanical terms. These come in very handy when talking about Amorphs.