Re: New subject: pronunciation of plant names

To: Aquatic-Plants at actwin_com
Subject: Re: New subject: pronunciation of plant names
From: WORKINGSW at aol_com
Date: Fri, 21 Jul 1995 20:53:33 -0400

<<From: Stephen.Pushak at hcsd_hac.com

Listening to George on tape made me realize how much differently I pronounce
some words like Hygrophila (maybe it's George who's different ;-) I say it:
HIGH - grow - fill - ah and George says it high - GRAW - fill - ah.  Anybody 
besides George and me know the correct pronunciation.  Maybe it's because I'm

a Canadian, eh?  ;-)>>

Steve, I have a vague memory from when my mother was taking botany classes
that there is a botanical name convention of emphasizing the 3rd to last
syllable in certain plant names.  Thus "Clematis", which I usually hear as
clem-AT-is, is properly pronounced CLEM-a-tis (i.e. George is correct).  But
this is a pretty vague memory, and may even be unintentionally fabricated
(oy, I'm getting old).  Anyone with a botanical taxonomy text kicking around,
please confirm or dispute!

Anne