Just to add a bit. This is probably not only a shift in commonplace Latin and Greek being transferred to and memorialized in botanic nomenclature and church writings, but the result of handwritten manuscripts, poor vision, poor lighting, poor printing, poor transportation with resulting isolation of one community from another, but the lack of any centralized authority to appeal to for correction. It's partly why your 4th grade teacher (U. S. residents only?) wanted you to improve your penmanship, and why in some schools there was a Spencerian model of the entire alphabet (upper and lower-case examples) up in front of the class over the blackboard every day of the year. So we now have an international nomenclatural authority (in science), a better-educated populace (viz. this outstanding group), and we can talk, read, and write about this stuff and send it around and marvel at one another's repositories of not-so-useful information . If anybody wants, I can even refer any interested parties to a calligrapher who works with medieval colors and parchment if need be. And...some days, this forum is a needed antidote and anodyne to the rest of the world's miseries. Cheers to all. Adam in Glenview, IL USDA Zone 5a