Taxa Field Guide

Gk. eu- = well; phorbe = pasture or fodder; probably after Euphorbus, Greek physician to Juba II, King of Mauretania. Juba was educated in Rome and married the daughter of Antony and Cleopatra. He was apparently interested in botany and had written about an African cactus-like plant from the slopes of Mount Atlas, which he had found or knew about, which was used as a powerful laxative. That plant may have been Euphorbia resinifera, and like all Euphorbias had a latexy exudate (milky emulsion from certain plants). Euphorbus had a brother named Antonius Musa who was the physician to Augustus Caesar in Rome. When Juba heard that Caesar had honoured his physician with a statue, he decided to honour his own physician by naming the plant he had written about after him.

Gk. pelargos = a stork; referring to the beak of the fruit which resembles a stork’s bill (cf Geranium, Erodium).

For Podalirius (La.), from Podaleirios (Gk.), son of Asklepios, god of healing. He and his brother, Machaon were physicians to the Greek army during the Trojan wars, as described in the Iliad. The brothers’ great feat was the healing of the festering foot of Philoctetes, who was badly needed for his arrows, but whose fetid stench sorely disturbed the warriors. The flowers of this genus are strongly fragrant but not unpleasantly so, rather sweet-smelling.

For Carl (Karl) Gottlob Rafn (1769–1808), Danish civil servant, botanist and science writer. He studied medicine and botany at the University of Copenhagen in 1788, and later veterinary science, but did not take the exams. He had a range of jobs such as an agriculture assessor and director of a distillery, but his main interests were natural history and science. He authored or co-authored a range of publications, including the Flora of Denmarks and Holstein, a book on plant physiology (1798), a paper on animal hibernation with JD Herholdt, and a book on life-saving measures for drowning persons. He became a member of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences in 1798.

Gk. xiphos = sword; theka = case, capsule; referring to the shape of the pod.

After John M. von Muralt, Swiss botanist and author; flourished around 1576.

Gk. poly = much; gala = milk; so-called from the belief that cattle grazing in fields with this plant produced more milk. (San Marcos growers in the United States claim that Polygala virgata ‘Portola’ has this property but the authors could find no scientific evidence).

For William Watson (1715–1787), English physician, apothecary, botanist and naturalist. He introduced the work of Linnaeus and his botanical classification system to Britain. He was the first scientist to observe the flash of light from the discharge of a Leyden jar and to show that electricity could pass through a vacuum and that it had a positive and negative charge; he coined the word ‘circuit’. His articles, entitled Experiments on the Nature of Electricity, appeared from 1745 onward in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, of which he became a member (1741) and vice president (1772). Both he and Benjamin Franklin discovered some of the same characteristics of electricity at the same time, but independently. The two men became friends.

Iris = rainbow in Latin and Greek; Iris was also the Greek goddess of the rainbow and messenger of the gods.

From the Greek orchis, testis; referring to the resemblance to the twin pseudo-bulbs of some genera.

From the Latin spinosus = ‘thorny’

From the Greek ‘myrt’ / ‘myrtos’ meaning ‘myrtle’; and the Latin ‘folia’ / ‘folium’ meaning ‘leaf’.

From the Latin umbellatus meaning ‘equipped with parasols’. This typically refers to an umbellate arrangement of flowers.

From the Latin ‘erici’ / ‘erica’ meaning ‘heath’; and the Latin ‘folia’ / ‘folium’ meaning ‘leaf’.

From the Latin gibbosus = ‘humped / pouched / tuberculed'

From the Latin 'salici' meaning Salix/willow and 'folia' meaning leaves

From the botanical name for a Willow, Salix, and the Latin folius = 'leaf'