masoniorum?
J.E. Shields (Thu, 26 Aug 2010 06:47:44 PDT)

Russell,

It's just a matter of orthography. In botanical Latin, most proper names
end in -ia (f) or -ius (m), one exception being names ending in -r. E.g.,
Hymenocallis lehmilleri named after Dave Lehmiller. So "masoniorum" is
masculine genitive plural. The foregoing to the contrary not withstanding,
you will probably see it as "Nerine masonorum" at least as often as you see
Nerine masoniorum. A few years back, we had a lengthy discussion of this
very point somewhere, maybe in the IBS list.

BTW, John Bryan lists it as "Crocosmia masoniorum" in his "Bulbs" (revised
edition); not that John always got everything right...... Batten and
Bokelmann don't even list Crocosmia mason(i)orum in their 1966 book on
flowers of the Eastern Cape.

Jim Shields

At 08:58 AM 8/26/2010 -0400, you wrote: