Questions & answers & Re-introduction to the work.

 

Introduction to this new work 

As stated on several other pages of this blog, this work is not meant  to be regarded as a “dictionary” or an authoritative lexicon with the definitive answer to all manners of translation, transliteration, transcription, conversion etc. It is a serious preparatory compiling of names, which can mostly be found on the internet, therefore which are relevant to people around the world, excepted for a handful of truely academic “common names” meaningful only to scientists, or in the absence of any common name, some suggested names. The professional aspect of this work is that it is based on “current” botanical nomenclature. The listing of most botanical synonyms should help in the continual understanding of the concepts through the various taxonomic upgrades, at least over the next few years.

The aim is to prepare the work of serious professional lexicographers who will be game enough to tackle these problems of applied linguistics. A word of warning : it is not as simple as feeding all the names to an AI robot and expect miracles. There will always be a need for human supervision, as long as we value accurate orthographic and meaningful translation.

This work is offered free of charge to anyone interested. I am only hoping that the source will be acknowledged as it should.

Michel H. Porcher 

Multilingual Multiscript Plant Name Database (M.M.P.N.D.).

< https://www.plantnames.unimelb.edu.au/ >. 1985 - 2015

< https://hortibloke.blogspot.com > . 2015 - 2025 

Questions & Answers

(As they come, in no particular order).

Q : I have read on the internet that the process of romanization does not help in understanding foreign scripted words. Your view ?

Absolutely false. Without this I could never have done the work on the M.M.P.N.D. 30 + years of handling 50 + languages must count for something.

Q : You appear to have doubts about the reliability of the Botanical names. Care to comment ?

I have far more doubts about common names. But this is understandable. I always cringe when academics put down vernacular and boast about the reliability of Botanical names. True they are more reliable but not perfect. Again this is understandable. Botanical Latin being based on a dynamic science are bound to evolve. The two leading world databases such as Plants of the World Online and World Flora Online struggle with this. I understand that they wish to combine their efforts and merge their data which differ ever so slightly. This will make our life easier, as long as the customer friendly approach of the WFO is maintained.

Q : It would appear that you oversimplify the botanical synonymy, care to comment ?

Yes you are correct, and I justify this by sticking to taxa that I know match common names. If anyone is a fan of botanical synonymy I recommend that you check, among numerous other examples, the subspecific levels of Urtica dioica. Honestly it is a dog breakfast. Most of those subsp. and var. would not match any common name but moreover it would confuse anybody trying to do this work. Generally my approach is to find either a common name in any language or a botanical name. This is the beginning of a long process. It is unusual to start with a subspecific name. These come later, when the botanical name turns out to be superseded, reduced to a synonym, is a subspecific name, or simply illegitimate. The spelling can also be wrong, experience here is key to actually knowing what is what. 

To sum up : avoiding all these superfluous taxa makes the compilation much clearer.

Q :  Why don’t you have indexes ?

The short answer is because I have neither the hardware nor the software to generate them, not yet anyhow.

I have published a Japanese and a Russian indexes of Acacias, and most recently a Greek index, as an experiment, hoping for some feedback. So far no reaction.

Generally speaking any file dedicated to a genus is a mega index which can be searched with the “Search in Page” command, in any language in any script. If a name has been changed the new one will be given. It is then just a matter of jumping to a new page. Not ideal I know, but better than nothing.