Cherry, there are other frequent case where the gender of the species name does not match the gender of the genus name. Species names are typically adjectives (when they match the gender of the genus name) or possessive nouns (where they have their own gender). But there are other peculiar situations which arise occasionally: sometimes species names are nouns in apposition. In this case, these nouns have their own gender and are in the nominative case. I can think of two broad categories of this phenomenon, one of which is fairly common, one rare. The common category involves species names which are old pre-Linnean genus names, e.g. Cyanus as in Centaurea cyanus. Centaurea is feminine, cyanus is masculine. In the old days, botanists wrote these old genus names with a capital letter to clue the reader in to the fact that they are not simply adjectives used incorrectly. The modern practice is to use a lower case letter for the initial letter of a species name, thus Centaurea cyanus in modern practice. But in the old days this would have been written Centaurea Cyanus: the capital letter used for the first letter of the species name indicating that that word is a pre-Linnaean genus name. The second category is less common. Perhaps the best known example of this is the small group of names based on words ending -cola (e.g. monticola). A well known example is the name Sedum cauticola. Many older books give this name as Sedum cauticolum, since the genus name Sedum is neuter. But the word cauticol- is not an adjective. It is a noun in apposition (and a noun in the nominative case). So the correct form of the name is Sedum cauticola. Jim McKenney jimmckenney@jimmckenney.com Montgomery County, Maryland, USA, 39.03871º North, 77.09829º West, USDA zone 7 My Virtual Maryland Garden http://www.jimmckenney.com/ BLOG! http://mcwort.blogspot.com/ Webmaster Potomac Valley Chapter, NARGS Editor PVC Bulletin http://www.pvcnargs.org/ Webmaster Potomac Lily Society http://www.potomaclilysociety.org/