Who knows there Latin?

[daltontrees]

12 hours ago, Mick Dempsey said:

Not just plant, it’s animals as well, if scientist A in Devon wants to contact scientist B in South Africa about why the lesser spotted beetle throttler which is called the mbongo mbingo in Swaziland is late arriving this year, he’s going to need a way of identifying the species. 

 

That's exactly it. The good thing about scientific names is that they are composed in a language that no-one  uses for anything else. Thus it's international,  doesn't evolve or mutate, leaves no room for ambiguity.

 

Expecting everyone to use English is a peculiarly English thing. And of course the problem that the biggest group of English speakers (USA) don't speak the same English as the English. Not only do they call sycamores planes, they call planes sycamores. Limes are basswoods, poplars are cottonwoods and so on.

 

And to get back to the original post, you can use the latinised naming to find meaning that can help you remember. So , based on leaf shape sycamore is Acer pseudoplatanus (= false + plane),  Norway maple is Acer platanoides (= plane-like), and London plane is Platanus x acerifolia (= maple + leaves). If you're trying to memorise them I think it's always worth looking up the meaning. It might (might) give you something memorable to work with.

 

Also, say them out loud, it helps make them stick. No-one speaks latin anymore so there's no right or wrong way to pronounce them. You can corrupt the pronunciation any way you want that helps you remember them. But if you use rude mnemonics, try not to use them later in meetings or with customers.

 

There comes a point when you just have to know them as new words. Acer, fagus, quercus, fraxinus and  other common native genus are the original latin names, they have no other meaning.

Edited July 31, 2019 by daltontrees

[Khriss]

15 hours ago, difflock said:

Bollcocks!

Latin may well have been the written language, but remember French was up there too for written stuff(& early British passports too?), and for fucks sake Anglo Saxon was the spoken one.

P.S.

I always liked the irony of English being the lingua franca for business Worldwide.

......tell That to the Welsh!  K

[Gary Prentice]

17 hours ago, spudulike said:

He is a big fella so wouldn't take the proverbial out of him....unless you fancy being beaten with a skittle!

I thought that my original post was in no way derogatory to Steve, definitely not intending to take the proverbial anyway. My intention was to come to his defence, saying incorrectly that I believed that he had said he was dyslexic.  If my post was taken as a dig by him, or anyone else, I apologise. That was far from my intention.

13 hours ago, kevinjohnsonmbe said:

I agree (with what I interpret as) your broader observation Mark, but disagree with (what I interpret as) your overarching disagreement with the entirety of my post  ?   As ever, mine was (at least in part) la langue dans la joue in the hope that someone might present a better argument and justification for latin nomenclature than I had previously considered. ??

I was going to reply to this, but Jules response is better than mine would have been 

22 hours ago, kevinjohnsonmbe said:

 

 

As to orders from foreign suppliers - well that’s simple to fix and hardly a justification of need - we’d have a lot less pests and diseases if we stopped importing dubious provenance product from Johnny Foreigner and bought British (from Barchams for example!)

 

 

Might be incorrect, but I'm sure that Barchams do import trees. But the claim/state that they voluntarily keep imports in their own quarantine 'facility' before moving them on to the end user. Which of course they are no legally obliged to do.

 

A bit off topic, but have you read some of the OPM article in the Guardian concerning the recent infected oak imports (from 'safe' countries? Apparently the infected trees have been moved all around the country. The moths should be flying in the next few weeks, totally ruining the existing containment attempts around London. Currently the losing battle is costing around £1M p.a.    I was attacked in another thread recently for arguing the case about advising or helping clients to source large imported trees 

[Khriss]

....bloody tree hugger ! But yes, OPM removal efforts have come to nothing in Town, biggest culprits are the LA's n golf courses ! K

[Gary Prentice]

9 minutes ago, Khriss said:

.bloody tree hugger !

Is that meant to be an insult? 

[Khriss]

Not at all Gary. Thou sick of hugging these Oaks on Central line. Do not think the spec will be followed. K

[kevinjohnsonmbe]

1 hour ago, Gary Prentice said:

 

 I was going to reply to this, but Jules response is better

 

It usually is Gary ???

 

(I don’t mean better than yours, I mean better than most! ?)

 

Im still sticking to ma guns though, at the customer (and my meaning is domestic + Cornish - whatever the Latin for that might be) interface, it’s pretty much a total waste of time / effort and serves little more purpose than self aggrandisement. 

[difflock]

5 hours ago, Khriss said:

......tell That to the Welsh!  K

Who?

[se7enthdevil]

10 hours ago, Gary Prentice said:

I thought that my original post was in no way derogatory to Steve, definitely not intending to take the proverbial anyway. My intention was to come to his defence, saying incorrectly that I believed that he had said he was dyslexic.  If my post was taken as a dig by him, or anyone else, I apologise. That was far from my intention.

I was going to reply to this, but Jules response is better than mine would have been  

trust me, no offence taken.

 

if there were any though i'd turn a very big baseball bat and beat you up with that rather than a skittle.

Edited July 31, 2019 by se7enthdevil

[daltontrees]

10 hours ago, EdwardC said:

I got my report back with a good half day of changes. One question was why had I added 'Recommendations' to the end of BS 5837:2012 Trees in relation to design, demolition and construction - Recommendations. I was told it was out of context and not needed. This got me thinking about what 'recommendations' means in British Standard speak. This led me to BS 0:2016 A standard for standards. A proper riveting read. The thing that jumped out at me as I purused BS 0 was the spelling of specialization. Yes, specialization and not specialisation. Specialise was spelt specialise. Specialization is English English, not an Amercanism, who'd have thought it.

I trust you concluded that 'Recommendations' must be tagged on to the end of the title because that's the name of the Standard? One wouldn't for example call it 'BS 5837:2012 Trees in relation to design and construction - Recommendations' on a job that didn't involve demolition?

 

I hadn't known there was a BS0. I just skimmed through it and it is genuinely interesting. Rather disappointingly, 'recommendation; isn't defined in it. It does explain codes of practice -

 

A code of practice contains recommendations and supporting guidance,where the recommendations relevant to a given user have to be met in order to support a claim of compliance. Users may also justify substitution of any of the recommendations in a code of practice with practices of equivalent or better outcome. Depending on the context and field of application, a code of practice usually reflects current good practice as employed by competent and conscientious practitioners.