We have all heard of plants that embody characteristics of animals, such as tiger lily, elephant's ear, and staghorn fern. Latin terms for animals and their characteristics also show up in scientific names. Lupinus is a superb example, derived from the Latin from lupus, a wolf, because they erroneously believed that the plant ravenously devours nutrients in the soil. Lupinus texensis is the bluebonnet, the state flower of Texas. Hops, used in flavoring beer, is Humulus lupulus (meaning small wolf), a reference to its viny habit of climbing over other plants.
Equally recognizable is the Latin word equus, the horse, which is known in botany via the genus Equisetum, the horsetails (equus + seta, a bristle), so-called because its whorled green stems have a bushy appearance. Other applications are the Mexican shrub Russelia equisetiformis and Casuarina equisetifolia (Australian beefwood), both of which superficially resemble Equisetum. Casuarina bears yet another animal reference, here to the cassowary of New Guinea and Queensland, because its whispy, slender and wiry stems are reminiscent of the bird's feathers. In Greek, hippus is a horse, as you already know from hippopotamus, meaning river horse. Garden plants include Hippeastrum (hippus + aster, star), South American bulbs in which the flowering structure allegedly looks like a horse's head, and the horse-chestnut, Aesculus hippocastanum from Europe, a member of the Hippocastanaceae.
Those of you born under the sign of Capricorn know its symbol is a goat, capri or caper (L.). Oxalis pes-caprae, called Bermuda buttercup, neither is a buttercup nor comes from Bermuda. Originating in South Africa, this bulbous herb has leaflets like a goat's foot (L. pes, foot). Ipomoea pes-caprae, a vine that colonizes tropical beaches, also bears a reference to its leaves. Caprifolium, meaning goat leaf, is a former name for honeysuckle, now Lonicera. Ipomoea is New Latin from the Greek ips (worm) and homoios (resembling).
Let's not slight the amphibians. Lurking in Ranunculus, the buttercups and crowfoots, is rana, Latin for a frog. The plant genus was so named by Linnaeus because many of the species grow in wet habitats.
Avis is not just a place that rents cars and trucks; it can also refer to birds, as in aviary. Prunus avium (L. of birds) is the sweet cherry, which produces fruits eaten by birds. From the Greek come other bird references: Geranium (geranos, crane), Erodium (erodios, heron), and Pelargonium (pelargos, stork), descriptors of the long-beaked fruits of the storkbill family. References in plant binomials to other flying animals can be found, e.g., with bees (L. apis), as in the white or bee sage of our local mountains, Salvia apiana, or the tropical butterfly-pollinated plants of the genus Psychotria (L. psyche, butterfly).
Goodbye comes with the monkey hand tree (Chiranthodendron pentadactylon) and its tiny red hand complete with "fingernails," that bids you, Hasta la vista, beasta.
JULIE RASKOFF, MEMBG Docent