About the pronunciation and syllabification of the words amancaes/amancaës: Dell wrote: “I think I remember that "amancaes" comes from a Peruvian place name where the plant grows.” I assume the word amancaes is derived from one of the indigenous languages of Peru. If that is true, it gets its spelling from the sound of the word: amancaes is a phonetic spelling, a way of representing the sounds of the original in Spanish. Spanish vowels are technically divided into strong vowels (a,e, o) and weak vowles (i, u). The general rule is that a syllable can contain only one strong vowel. In other words, in Spanish the syllables of the word amancaes are a-man-ca-es: it’s a four syllable word. When amancaes becomes part of a Latin or Latinized binomial, a problem arises. The letter combination ae in Latin represents the sound of the English word eye (for those who use textbook pronunciations) or the vowel sound in the English word see (widespread usage in those who have not studied Latin or have rejected the text book approach). . In Latin, ae is a diphthong and both letters may occur together in the same syllable. In Latin (and allowed by the International Rules) the dieresis (those two little dots placed over some letters, e.g. ë, ü. – not to be confused with the German umlaut) is used to indicate that two letters which typically form a diphthong are in this case to be pronounced separately. If one writes amancaes in Latin, that is a three syllable word. To indicate four syllables, write amancaës. I think it is the latter which approximates the pronunciation of the word in its source language. 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/