Are There Really Common Names for Subspecies?

That misses the point of a common name. You have no idea what species are going to need the common names until they are necessary.

If you wanted a guess, I’d say about half of common names for subspecific taxa are in use on iNat but not widely used in general. And a smaller proportion are “invented” or only have 1 source. On the other hand, I don’t advocate the need for everything to have a common name. So there’s still some sort of balance where it becomes too little or too much.

I still don’t really like the concept of being able to just make a field guide with common names and suddenly those names are more “valid”. I understand the desire for a formality, but that results in some woefully inconsistent outcomes and treatment.

2 Likes

This is why there is a school of thought that there shouldn’t be “suggested common names.” If a name has not been in common use, it isn’t a common name.

Another problem comes in when a suggested common name uses the genus name, and then there is a taxonomic change. Horticulturists know about poinsettias and geraniums, but the former has currently been reduced to a subgenus within Euphorbia – and the latter have been moved into an entirely different genus! You will not find your horticultural geraniums in a search of the genus Geranium.

4 Likes

I may have been overly expansive in saying there are “plenty of plants” that are now infrataxa but originated as species with valid common names, but also I think a big part of the differing perspectives comes from different people’s views of what names are valid.

The number of taxa with well-attested, broadly accepted vernacular names used by “common people” is probably a lot smaller than the number than the number that have common names used in more narrow contexts. For example, lots of species have received common names from amateur wildflower hobbyists since the 19th century and these are often used in popular wildflower guides.

I looked for some examples and here are a few I found:

  • Scarlet Pimpernel, aka Poor man’s Weatherglass — Lysimachia arvensis var. arvenensis
  • Blue Pimpernel — Lysimachia arvensis var. caerulea

or

  • Edelweiss (and lots of other regional common names), historically regarded as a different plant from Leontopodium nivale (which likely has other vernacular common names in its habitat in the Balkans). Both plants have most recently been treated as subspecies of L. nivale or of L. alpinum.

or

  • Queen Anne’s Lace — Daucus carota ssp. carota
  • Sea Carrot — Daucus carota ssp. gummifer

or

  • Bright Blue Speedwell or Mountain Speedwell — Veronica serpyllifolia ssp. humifusa
  • Thyme-Leaved Speedwell — Veronica serpyllifolia ssp. serpyllifolia
1 Like

O.K., point taken. There are some examples, but they are often dependent on the taxonomy used. The problem with real vernacular names was always that some taxa (even if only species complexes like e.g. Taraxacum “officinale”) had many and others had none. And then someone had to “take from the rich and give to the poor” i.e. reduce the many to one for a whole country and coin some name for the nameless taxon. I´ve just looked up Taraxacum and Leontodon/Scorzoneroides in the “Exkursionsflora für Österreich etc.” (they are much more meticulous about the vernacular names business than we Germans) and they named Taraxacum “Löwenzahn” (though well established perhaps only a translation of dandelion into German, it was certainly never called that by the old folks in the region where I live) and Leontodon they named “Leuenzahn”!. If you have to abuse our poor language in such a manner just to create a “vernacular” name, I for one prefer the scientific ones.

3 Likes

This topic was automatically closed 60 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.