Hi Diana, Under the IUB rules, persons' names when Latinized must have "-ius" (masculine) or "-ia" (feminine) appended unless the root name ends in "-r". Published mistakes in spelling have been changed routinely. E.g., Haemanthus barkerae is "(Miss) Barker's haemanthus," while in Calochortus westonii, "westonii" is the genitive (possessive) case of the (Latinized) name "Westonius". So it translates as "Weston's calochortus." Taxonomists are still trying to get the rest of us to refer to "Nerine masoniorum" instead of the N. "masonorum." Jim Shields At 08:37 AM 7/11/2005 -0700, you wrote: >Since we seem to have members on the PBS forum who are versed in Latin or >linguistics, I would like some clarification of spelling, if possible. > >Calochortus westoni when first described was spelled thus. It has morphed >into C. westonii, repeated in recent articles and even in the Jepson Manual. >What gives? The same applies to C. gunnisoni, now spelled C. gunnisonii. I >thought from my extremely distant memories of Latin that the "i" ending >means "of" or "from" or "belonging to" or something of that sort, so why put >two of them? Then what about C. leichtlinii, C. nuttallii, C. coxii, C. >howellii, C. lyallii and C. weedii? And then there's Camassia cusckii etc., >etc. > >Comments appreciated. > >Diana >Telos Rare Bulbs > >_______________________________________________ >pbs mailing list >pbs@lists.ibiblio.org >http://www.pacificbulbsociety.org/list.php ************************************************* Jim Shields USDA Zone 5 Shields Gardens, Ltd. P.O. Box 92 WWW: http://www.shieldsgardens.com/ Westfield, Indiana 46074, USA Tel. ++1-317-867-3344 or toll-free 1-866-449-3344 in USA