Jerry wrote “???? One of my pet peeves is the misspelling of the word "cupanii".? This Italian botanist regularly used in his corespondence and other writing the latinized version of of his name as Cupanus.? Hence the genative singular would be " cupani,"? with just one "i" .?? Admittedly verry few people learn Latin any more? but Brian Mathew and others who should know better consistently use the misspelled version.? “ Jerry, I think you’re being rather hard on those of us who routinely write cupanii rather than cupani. Is Gussone’s cupani to be construed as a masculine singular genitive adjective derived from the neo-Latin word Cupanus or is it to be construed as a masculine nominative plural Italian noun in apposition to the word Colchicum? How do we know that Gussone did not intend to write cupanii, and that cupani is not a typo? Did Gussone himself make his intentions clear? And would you then say that specific epithets based on the Italian name Bertoloni are misspelled when they are cited as bertolonii? This issue is doubly confusing because in modern botanical usage the –ii ending is now the standard for the masculine singular genitive forms of words with stems ending in a consonant (or in the case of non-Latin words, words which end in a consonant) – and words published with a single –i are now routinely corrected to –ii when the stem (or non-Latin word) ends in a consonant. To add to the potential confusion, zoology uses the –i exclusively in similar cases. 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/