Preface

  As employed here the term grass applies only to species included in the Poaceae, one of the largest families of flowering plants. However, the word is often applied to any herbaceous plant with long, narrow leaves. A similar view was adopted by the Ancients. The Greeks applied the words poa, poe and agrostis to herbaceous plants in general and the Romans employed the words gramen and herba in a similar sense. In both cultures, unique names were applied to species of economic or special significance. As a major source of cereals, pasture plants and even timber, the Poaceae are one of the most important economic plant families. Many have acquired vernacular names but these vary from place to place and so are of limited value for technical purposes. For ease of professional communication vernacular names are replaced with binomials whose use is controlled by an International body.

  Initially the binomials were derived mainly from words of Classical Greek or Latin, but the practice was never strictly enforced. Today taxonomists often employ words from their own language or resort to naming grasses after places, people, ships, uses, acronyms to name but a few sources. In the process the names are often Latinized making it difficult for readers, especially those whose language has not been influenced by the European Classics, to recognize their sources and to determine their meanings.

  Because it is usually easier to remember a technical name once its meaning is known, the authors hope this work will be of value to ecologists, agronomists and others not primarily interested in grass taxonomy. Those who are concerned can always consult the scientific literature. Even so, without the resources of a large library, determining the origins and meanings of many binomials is impossible. This situation is changing rapidly with the advent of the Internet and the ever increasing amount of information that is available in the public domain. Nonethe- less, searching the Internet is time consuming and a single reference such as that presented here may be helpful to professional biologists and others interested in the origins of names.

  The entries herein include most of the names published during the past 250 years but the seemingly endless torrent of new names being proposed means that a few of the more recent have been overlooked. Some of the older names for which no interpretation was given with the original description have been omitted and the majority of misspellings have been ignored.

  The work presented below is based on a previously published dictionary1 but has been completely revised and expanded. There are about 12 500 entries and the authors apologize to any reader who searches in vain for a name not included. Trevor Clifford and Peter Bostock

  Queensland Herbarium, April 2006

  The authors are particularly grateful to Halina Winters, Librarian, Queensland Herbarium, for her unstinting and cheerful assistance in locating literature, for providing valuable insights into Slavic languages particularly Polish, and for searching the Internet for biographical and geographical information. Meg Lloyd, Librarian, Queensland Museum has also been helpful in searching out obscure references especially to fossil grasses. Our colleagues Bryan Simon and Daniel Healy have taken an active interest in the project throughout, drawing attention to omissions and errors in the text as it evolved. Bryan also provided the photograph of Pennisetum villosum which appears on the cover and which was recommended to us by Will Smith, Botanical Illustrator at Queensland Herbarium. Finally it is our pleasure to acknowledge our indebtedness to Jutta Lindenborn for her wise counsel and ongoing support.