Terminology and etymology

I am looking for quiet things to do today, having been laid low with a germ all weekend and being required to find energy for the Dartmoor trip tomorrow. I thought you might like some encouragement about all the new terminology you may find yourself learning in your taxonomic-collecting quest.

I actually quite enjoy it. It's only when you start looking closely and afresh at beetles or ferns or whatever, that you see that they have all these Specific Bits. And it's the difference in form of these bits that allows you to distinguish one species from another. You may already have specialised language you use in some other realm which allows you to communicate with others with the same interest - perhaps about engines or knitting or rock climbing or whatever. So this is just another version of that - you're developing a new vocabulary you'll share with like-minded people and which will enable you to communicate clearly and specifically.

using Miika Silfverberg's CC fern photo

Earlier this year I was very, very lucky and was shown round the Botanical Gardens in Havana by one of its leading employees. My Spanish is shamefully non-existent (luckily his English was better). But our successful communication hinged on a shared vocabulary of botanical terminology. The scientific names of plants are of course international, but so (pretty much) are the botanical names of their constituent parts. So he could point out all the exotic and wonderful plants and their strange seed pods and so on, and I did much geeky botanical squealing of delight. It was very interesting. So doing this assignment could stand you in similar good stead when you go off globe-trotting.

Anyway. Whichever key you end up using it'll probably have a diagram of a generalised example of your chosen plant or animal, along with a glossary of the terms used, and when you start using the key you'll be referring to that quite a bit.

The terms aren't plucked out of the air of course; they're generally derived from relevant words in Latin, Greek and perhaps Arabic.

For example, take the fern in the picture above. The whole above-ground part is called a frond (meaning a leafy twig, in Latin - the way you might use 'frond' in everyday language). The 'laminar' means a very thin plate, and 'stipe' means stalk. The parts of the blade mean sensible though more specific things too - 'rachis' is Greek for spine (and it runs down the centre of the blade giving it support) and 'pinna' is Latin for feather, echoing the way a feather is divided up. The midrib of the pinna is a 'costa': it means rib in Latin (it's not like the Spanish 'coast' of Costa Coffee... but I'm guessing there's a connection somewhere). If you fancy looking into more botanical terms this is pretty good, and for derivations of entomological words you could look at this; and I've found this one which has quite a few names for fungi and lichens (yes they're dusty archaic tomes but etymology fortunately doesn't often change). This recent book is good for botanical names.

A crab on its back (1888)  painted by Vincent Van Gogh.

I remember seeing this painting in the flesh and being really blown away by it (it doesn't reproduce on the internet so well but that's not a bad thing). I hope Mr Van Gogh wouldn't mind his excellent observational skills being commandeered to show the parts of a crab's cheliped. You're going to have to invoke your own skills to figure out what's referred to by the keys you use. I'm sure the person marking your work would also appreciate some nice clear diagrams to illustrate your understanding.

Should you wish to know - cheliped comes from the Greek for claw (chele) and Latin for foot (pedis). Dactylus derives from the Greek for 'finger'; propodus = fore foot; carpus = Latin for 'wrist' (think carpal tunnel syndrome); and merus derives from the Greek for a body part, a thigh. Finally, coxa is the Latin for hip.

I think it's interesting to find out the derivation of the names, and sometimes it can make them stick in your head.