In another thread the topic of duplicate common names came up.
Like:
Golden rain tree, Cassia fistula
Golden rain, Laburnum anagyroides
Goldenrain tree, Koelreuteria paniculata
‘Urchin’ as a common name for both sea urchins and porcupines always makes me smile, personally.
Any favorite (Edited to add: or endlessly irritating) examples of unrelated species with the same common names?
Periwinkles are both snails and garden flowers.
As a bug guy, I love the daddy long legs trifecta.
I had someone argue that “brown cup fungus” was exclusive to a single species of Peziza and that my use of that common name for the genus was inappropriate.
I just had to clarify which nasturtium i meant–a lot of plants go by an old scientific name which has become a common name to gardeners.
Rockweed is a brown alga and a cute little tropical plant.
Possums (order Diprotodontia) and opossums (order Didelphimorphia), usually pronounced the same way. Their only genetic commonality is being both marsupials.
Funny enough, as a fisherman this is the source of a lot of aggravation for me. Flashback to the time I spent ten minutes trying to explain to my friend that a warmouth was not a “perch,” and that “perch” was a colloquialism for similar-looking sunfish AND an actual unrelated fish…I don’t think the message ultimately sank in
A fritillary can be either a flower or a butterfly.
I got tripped up and made a bad ID once because locally stickleaf/Nasa and nettle/Urtica are both called “ortiga”. Nasa is an asterid in order Cornales, while Urtica is a rosid in order Rosales. But they both sting!
Sunfish:
I have noticed that almost every instance of (cultivated) Sago Cycad on iNaturalist is identified as the unrelated Sago Palm.
Also: Areca Palm. To me, that means the genus Areca; but iNaturalist assigns it to Dypsis lutescens, which I know as butterfly palm.
The common names for a number of butterfly genuses are the same as those of many birds, eg. Albatross, Gulls, Jays, Tits, Crows.
I am actually generally more annoyed by common names, especially when they have many meanings as it can complicate communication quite a bit (that does not mean that I don´t understand why they exist… scientific names can be pretty bulky and difficult to remember). One such example from the german language is “Butterblume” (~butterflower), which can be basically any yellow flowering plant on a meadow (Ficaria, Rannunculus, Caltha, Taraxacum, Calendula…) leading to a lot of confusion about e.g. toxicity.
But one of my favourite german common names “Bienenwolf” (~bee-wolf) describes a graboid wasp hunting bees (Philanthus) and a beetle (Trichotes) - both pretty charismatic species I think.
Erica of which we have hundreds .That’s flowers, but someone has also used Erica for a spider.
There are hundreds, if not thousands, of examples where the same scientific name is used for a genus of plants and for a genus of animals.
Just so you know, and I apologize in advance for being pedantic, the plural of genus is genera. :)
ah right yes, indeed it is. thanks for correction.
but, why don’t botanists and zoologists live on the same planet?
The plants and animals do.
There is the unique case in the German language (at least as far as I am aware of), where a plant/animal pair of genera shares not only it’s scientific, but also its vernacular name:
The Self-heals and the dunnock/accentors both are in the genus Prunella and are called ‘Braunellen’ in German. Would like to hear if such a case exists in other languages as well.
Redshank
2 different genera of garden flowers!