Dodecatheon etymology
David Pilling (Wed, 13 Apr 2016 18:36:26 PDT)

Hi,

On 13/04/16 19:50, Travis O wrote:

Good point. If one wanted to quibble, it also is found in Siberia.

A fine source of name explanations is:

http://www.calflora.net/botanicalnames/

For the area around Dodec... it offers

"
Dodecahe'ma: from the Greek words dodeka, "twelve," and hema, "dart,
javelin," referring to the number of awns on the involucre (ref. genus
Dodecahema)
dodecan'dra: having twelve stamens (ref. Polanisia dodecandra ssp.
trachysperma)
Dodecath'eon: from the Greek dodeka, "twelve," and thios, "god(s)." One
source implies that it was considered to be powerful medicine and under
the care of the twelve leading gods, and another suggests that because
the flowers sometimes appear in clusters of twelve, the Roman naturalist
Pliny bestowed this name because he thought the flowers represented the
twelve Olympian gods (ref. genus Dodecatheon)
"

Another reference:

https://ventanawild.org/news/se02/…

"Although Carolus Linnaeus (1707-1778), the founder of the binomial
nomenclature system, did not state why he chose this name for a North
American genus, an explanation was provided by the eminent English
botanist Sir William Hooker (1785-1865):

'The Dodecatheon of modern authors has, however, nothing to do with the
individual to which Pliny applied so grand a designation, as it is a
native of the New World, and receives its name in allusion to the number
of flowers, frequently twelve, which it bears in each umbel (Curtis's
Botanical Magazine 64, plate 3622, 1837, as quoted in Ingram, 1963).'
"

--
David Pilling
http://www.davidpilling.com/