User:Dank/Stearn's botanical names (V–Z)

COPIED TO ARTICLE-SPACE 5 April 2020 MOVED TO Stearn's botanical names (U–Z) 6 April 2020

William T. Stearn (1911–2001) was one of the preeminent British botanists of the 20th century, a president of the Linnean Society and the original drafter of the International Code of Nomenclature for Cultivated Plants. He served as Librarian of the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) from 1934 to 1952, apart from the war years, and worked in the 1950s as Botany Librarian at the British Museum. Brent Elliott, another longtime Librarian (and later Historian) of the RHS, described the 1992 edition of Stearn's Dictionary of Plant Names for Gardeners as the "most authoritative account of botanical names and their meanings". This book benefited from Stearn's work with the botanical collections of the Natural History Museum, Kew Gardens and the Linnean Society. His textbook on Botanical Latin, first published in 1966, also became a standard.

Key
The Latin and Greek species and genus names come from the Dictionary of Plant Names, omitting names derived from people and places, names that have since been relegated to synonym status, and a few species names with alternative suffixes. The more recent history and meanings of the binomial names themselves are also omitted. Although the selection comes from Stearn, the definitions provided reflect a variety of modern authorities. Species names may appear with any of their nominative singular endings. The second column uses "L" for Classical (or occasionally Medieval) Latin, and "G" for Ancient Greek; other languages of origin are not covered.