I think you are describing the dark side of auto-suggest … 
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I am frustrated with kids who know all the Pokemons including names, abilities and stuff, but they cannot tell an insect from a spider. When they grow up, they will change this perspective, of course. Then they know all the cars including names, abilities and stuff … still cannot tell spider from insect …
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I actually did a project where I asked everyone in my class to name 10 common plants in our area, 10 common animals in our area, and 10 Pokemon. More people could name 10 Pokemon than any of the other categories.
Granted, I’m also a huge Pokemon fan who can recite every piece of Pokemon trivia - but I can also identify birds by call so…
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On my hike 2 days ago I was photographing lichens, and a passing hiker stopped to ask what I was taking pics of. “What’s a lichen?” was his puzzled response.
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Most common names have no logic except tradition. Best not to expect logic there.
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I hope one of those three is the Rimu. I say that because when I taught biology in Tonga, using a New Zealand curriculum, inspectors who visited insisted that it was reasonable to refer to the Rimu on the school leaving and university entrance exams our students took because it’s an important tree. In New Zealand, maybe! Tongan kids had no idea what it was.
I remember a “water moccasin” (which doesn’t live in Iowa) that when described was clearly a blue racer (gray blue with yellowish belly, not spotted, about as different as a snake could be from a water moccasin).
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I would say tradition is a logic, those names are the same because those were new species for people calling them, if they lived with them for centuries and more, they’d give them different names. All old names (older than English names for NA birds) are strictly functional and simple, they can be hard to understand now by us just because we live in other circumstances and lack knowledge that was applied before.
Nope, I doubt if more than a few nature-buffs living in my neighbourhood, would recognise it, despite there being some lovely old examples tucked into the gully behind the houses, and several visible from the streets, which bound about 100 H of native forest.
The reason being, one rarely sees it. In fact I did not know what it looked like until I moved next to a kauri forest in 1987, and got a book about native trees.
Some of the older folks at that time would have known it, I suspect, but nature was not part of the school curriculum until recently, and I assume most people stopped learning names of any plants at all when they stopped gardening.
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Weird. The tests required students to know the Rimu back in about 1975.
great! Yes, this is how it should be.
Ask me anything about Star Wars or Alpine Flowers …
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Terrapins! Everyone knows turtles and tortoises, but terrapins always seem to be forgotten.
ooh what is terrapins? I didn’t know that either 
ooh I got it they are turtles of ponds and lakes right???
At least in North America, terrapin applies just to the genus Malaclemys so it has very limited use. In British English it apparently can be used for other semi-aquatic chelonian species, what are called simply turtles in my area. At least in North America you can probably get by with just knowing the terms “turtle” and “tortoise.” But they’re all turtles, in the broad sense.
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I always thought terrapins were all the turtles that weren’t sea turtles or tortoises. And I’m North American aka east coast US. Although I am fuzzy about how soft shelled turtles fit in. Malaclemys is the only one named “terrapin” (twice actually, common & scientific).
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Terrapin certainly had broader use in the past in applying to many species, but in modern use it seems to be limited to just Malaclemys terrapin. I can’t speak to how the term is used in other English-speaking populations elsewhere in the world. I think you’re right, historically it seemed to be applied to many freshwater turtles.
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My husband and I just took a moss walk this past weekend. The lichens I saw were sheer bonus.
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Yes, it is a NorthAm term, derived from Algonquin Native American language. My understanding is that it was originally applied to the Diamondback Terrapin but was also used for other freshwater turtle species encountered on the continent, but now is mostly restricted to the one species. As it should be, in my opinion.