Alternative Post #5

From the beginning of the semester, we learned that different plants (not related to each other closely at all) could have the same common name.  For this reason, Dr. Van Zandt instructed us to learn the scientific name of each plant we encountered in lab.  This is something I really appreciate.  Even though some of the scientifice names didn't make sense (how are they supposed to make sense when we don't speak Latin), just learning the scientific name helped us to not become confused later on.  Though we haven't really encountered multiple plants with the same common names, I wanted to share an instance in lab where I noticed the discrepancy.  I had heard that Hexastylis arifolia had the common name of Little Brown Jug and of Wild Ginger.  Another plant has the same common name of Wild Ginger (Asarum Canadense).  This brings up another important distinction.  Some plants can have more than one common name.  It's important that we have one official naming system because we botanists are talking about plants, they need to make sure that they are discussing the same plant.  Due to the nature of the class, I chose to only learn the scientific name of the plants (in the end, I sometimes learned the common name because it was easy to remember).  This was just something that I have learned that is extremely important not only to the plant community, but to the entire scientific community.