Happy Holidays, everyone! I hope everyone is enjoying Christmas. I thought it would be fun to see how many taxa have Christmas in either their common name or scientific name. When I search Christmas on iNaturalist under “Taxa”, there was ten pages worth of material! Interestingly, there are apparently two Christmas Berries if one looks at the suggestions list before pressing enter…
Who could ever forget the Christmas Island Red Crab! Or any of the island’s namesake fauna, like the Christmas Island Frigatebird or Christmas Shearwater
Quite a few are named after locations that are named after Christmas, not species that are named after Christmas (or the time of year) itself, so that may well change your count, depending on whether you think the distinction is important.
For example, type in “Christmas Island” as your lead-in in the search box and you’ll see there are about 29 species are named after that place rather than after “Christmas” by itself.
The Christmas Tree, Nuytsia floribunda, is one of my favorite taxa. Really interesting large parasitic plant. It’s one of the largest parasitic plants, if not the largest, in the world.
I’m hoping I get to visit that part of the world and see them up close and personal.
An example would be Natal (Portuguese for Christmas). So Natal grass, Natal plum, and Natal lily, although named after a place in South Africa, are also indirectly named after Christmas.
Then there is Star-of-Bethlehem, named after one of the prominent images of Christmas.
(Note that Christmas Shearwater is named after a different Christmas Island than the one you’re referencing - Kiritimati, aka Christmas Island, in Kiribati)
The only Christmas species I have personal experience of is Schlumbergera , the Christmas cactus; I have two cultivars on my windowsills. The larger is known in this house as the Perpetual Cactus, due to the proportion of the year it spends in flower, though ironically neither are flowering at the moment.