Page 3 - Park News – October, 2020 | The Blackburn Creeklands

Scientific Names
What are those “Scientific Names” all about? A Swedish scientist Carl
Linnaeus set himself the no small task of inventing a way to classify every living thing
on earth in the 1700s– including us (Homo sapiens). Part of this system is a “binomial”
name – a name of two parts. It is always italicised or underlined as a matter of
protocol.
The first part nominates the “genus” (a group of related species) and the second, the
specific “species” part. The genus should always be capitalised, while the species part
is not.

Goodenia ovata

It takes two to tango – both names are needed to define a particular plant or animal.
While genus is unique, the same species part might be used for, say, different plants.
For example, our Eucalyptus ovata (Swamp Gum) is a large tree while Goodenia
ovata (Hop Goodenia) is a small-medium shrub. The “ovata” alludes to their oval
shaped leaves. In relation to plants, the binomial name is often called the “botanical
name”.
Why aren’t the names we use Swedish or English then? The answer is that
when Carl worked, “New Latin” was the language of science – Homo=man and

sapiens=wise or sensible. That distinguishes our species from one of our predecessors
say Homo erectus = standing up man.
So all the names are Latin ? No – not always – though everything is made to look
like Latin. They are often named after their discoverers. For example, the genus
Banksia is named after Captain Cook’s botanist Joseph Banks and was “latinised” by
adding the “ia”. Shiny Cassinia is known scientifically as Cassinia longifolia where
longifolia is Latin for “long leafed” – while Cassinia was named for the French botanist
Alexandre de Cassini.

Sometimes the name refers to where the organism was discovered or lives eg our
Laughing Kookaburra’s binomial name, Dacelo novaeguineae, indicates it comes from
New Guinea (novaeguineae = of New Guinea). Actually, the Laughing Kookaburra was
first described and illustrated by the French naturalist and explorer Pierre Sonnerat in
his book Voyage à la nouvelle Guinée published in 1776. He claimed to have seen the
bird in New Guinea. In turns out Pierre never visited New Guinea and the bird does not
occur there – though other species of Kookaburra do. It is likely he obtained a
preserved specimen from one of the naturalists who was with Captain Cook on his 1770
voyage to the east coast of Australia. So, a scientific fraud is basically perpetuated in
our Kookaburra’s name! What does Dacelo mean ? It is an anagram(!) of Alcedo, the

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