Another aspect of scientific languages that we have not mentioned here is the broad adoption of English as the de facto international language of business and science in the last 50 years. As a result, the ambiguous relation of spelling to pronunciation that is so characteristic of English is invading the field of botany as well, I suspect. The classical Latin pronunciation is probably not so foreign to most speakers of European languages other than English. On the other side of the Atlantic, it leaves most Americans a bit confused, I'd guess. The pragmatic approach seems to be to find a mutually comprehensible pronunciation with the individual with whom you are discussing botany, and stick with that for the duration of the conversation. In my experience, each new conversation requires a new set of pronunciations, in practice. Jim Shields ************************************************* 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