If you are a regular reader of our newsletter, by now you realize that each plant species has an officially recognized scientific name. The scientific name is a two-parted latinized binomial composed of the genus and the species name, or specific epithet. Plant species sometimes are named to honor individuals, but most commonly the binomial tells you something characteristic about the plant, including the region where the species is native. So it is that our lovely state of California appears, latinized, in the scientific names for many of the state's native plants. Adolphia californica, a plant novelty in this issue, is one example. What may surprise you--and it surprised me--is that our state holds the current record. My admittedly incomplete list of currently used scientific names includes 149 species and 18 additional subspecies or varieties. No other state in our nation has so many valid plant names recognizing it as a place of origin. Indeed, only a few countries in the world, such as China, Japan, Mexico, and "America," rival California for geographical top honors.
Some of the plants with the Californian designation are world renowned in horticultural circles. Heading the list is the California poppy, Eschscholzia californica--so showy each springtime at the Poppy Reserve north of Palmdale. What might irk a true California native is that this genus, with its 12 species endemic to western North America, and most especially to California, was named for J. F. Eschscholtz, a Russian naturalist (1793-1831), and seemingly misspelled at that!
A widely cultivated small tree native to the Sierra Nevada foothills is California's flannelbush, Fremontodendron californicum, commemorating the military explorer John Charles Fremont. John Fremont, you may remember, commanded three scientific and mapping expeditions for the U.S. Army Topographical Corps to the Far West (1842-1846), where he brought back information about native California plants. Through unusual circumstances, Fremont became a pivotal character in the acquisition of California, including capturing San Francisco with his California Battalion on July 4, 1846, accepting the surrender of Mexican General Pico in January 1847 to claim sovereignty of California for the United States, and becoming the first appointed civil governor of California. [At this point, I suggest that you put down your newsletter and instead read or reread the splendid accounts of Fremont and his extraordinary wife Jessie Benton Fremont by UCLA's beloved Irving Stone, Immortal Wife (1944) and Men to Match My Mountains (1956).] Fremont sent plant specimens collected on those expeditions to friend John Torrey, a Harvard University botanist who, with colleague Asa Gray, named many of our state's plants.
Students of carnivorous (insectivorous) plants know that bogs in northern California and western Oregon are the homeland of the California pitcher plant, Darlingtonia californica, also known as the cobra lily, which is not a lily. In the Sierra Nevada Torreya californica thrives, dubbed the California nutmeg but not actually a nutmeg. In his 1986 review of human uses of native plants, Walter Ebeling, UCLA professor emeritus and friend of MEMBG, mentions that the meat of the California nutmeg seed was roasted and eaten by certain Native American tribes (Handbook of Indian Foods and Fibers of Arid America, University of California Press). Speaking of useful California natives, you should become acquainted with the stoloniferous yerba mansa, Anemopsis californica, easily seen during springtime in alkaline wetlands of the Owens Valley. Its rhizomes were used in prehistoric California for a plethora of topical and internal ailments.
If you hike in Los Angeles County, you surely will pass by a host of species named for our grand state. California bay (Umbellularia californica), California walnut (Juglans californica), the California version of box elder (Acer negundo var. californicum), and California buckthorn or coffeeberry (Rhamnus californica) are large woody plants that do not have showy flowers. Quite beautiful in flower are the California prickly phlox (Leptodacylon californicum) growing from rock ledges, and California peony (Paeonia californica), a perennial herb that emerges in earliest spring on recently burned chaparral hillsides. The person who first collected and then named the California peony was another Harvard botanist, Thomas Nuttall, who, coincidentally, sailed from Monterey to Boston on the same ship as Richard Henry Dana (Two Years Before the Mast, 1842). Among the dominant low shrubs of coastal sage scrub are California brittlebush (Encelia californica) and California sagebrush (Artemisia californica), occurring with such interesting and colorful herbaceous perennials Rafinesquia californica, the very small-flowered Scrophularia californica, and very sharply-armed thistle Cirsium occidentale var. californicum. The dunes near Zuma Beach display the reflective leaves of Croton californicus.
In the deserts of Southern California you certainly will encounter the almost leafless, green-stemmed desert tea (Ephedra californica), the hummingbird-pollinated chuparosa (Justicia californica), and, living on legume trees, the parasitic desert mistletoe, Phoradendron californicum.
Some plants that are not natives of our state but that nonetheless bear its name. Southern Arizona is dome to an arborescent member of the rose family named Vauquelinia californica. A California begonia (Begonia californica) and a persimmon (Diospyros californica) occur instead south of the international border. Botanists for the last 150 years have typically treated Alta California and Baja California as one unit. One outstanding exception was published by the ecologiist Philip W. Rundel, a professor at UCLA since 1982, who named a new lichen from that desertic region Ramalina bajacalifornica.
Perhaps the only confusing issue about these names is their endings. In Latin, words possess gender, and the three most common endings are -um (masculine), -a (feminine), and -us (neuter). Endings of the genus and the species name often are alike, such as in Polypodium californicum, Caulanthus californicus, and Aristolochia californica. But this rule of thumb cannot always be followed; witness Juniperus californica and Rhamnus californica, mentioned earlier. The species name is an adjective describing the genus and therefore must reflect the gender of the genus. Have you ever wondered why binomials of oaks, such as Quercus agrifolia, or pines, such as Pinus ponderosa, seem to be misspelled? They are not; such trees are feminine. All this forces even trained taxonomists and ecologists to double-check spelling in well-researched published floras, and explains why botanists still need Latin scholars to keep plant names correct.
ARTHUR C. GIBSON, MEMBG Director