Dr M is relaxing for the festive season and offers this morsel from his table of festive botanical fare for your delight and delectation!
It is never ceases to amaze Dr M what you can find on the internet these days.
For example this very short scrap of a video on YouTube which demonstrates how to pronounce the word Poaceae!
Who would do such a thing and why?
But, more to the point, what does it do?!
Well, it certainly does what it says on the tin, it demonstrates how to pronounce that most important of botanical words “Poaceae”.
Well, sort of!
It gives two choices:
Po-ay-see-eye
or
Po-ay-sea-ee
Whilst this is fine for British and American botanists, with their notoriously lazy (or do I mean funny?) botanical latin, the more classically latinate botanists in the rest of the world might wonder why it does not include the likes of:
Po-art-sea-eh
Dr M is planning his own botanical latin video setting contrasting pronunciations of the latin names of plants! Entitled:
“You say Poaceae I say Poaceae, let’s call the whole botanical latin thing off!”
This will be Dr M’s first video to go viral for sure!
But this will take a tad of planning for sure and so while you wait for this epic happening here are a few more helpful tips on botanical latin (and there’s plenty more where these came from!):
Gramineae
Poaceae by Celia Cox
December 28, 2013
