Vaccar'ia/vaccar'ia: Flora of North America says about the genus Vaccaria that it comes from the Latin vacca, "cow," and -aria, "pertaining to," alluding to the alleged value of these plants for fodder in pastures. I can only assume that the specific name vaccaria as in Gypsophila vaccaria (one of whose common names is cowherb) has a related derivation. The genus Vaccaria was published by Nathanael Matthaeus von Wolf in 1776.

vacciniifo'lia: with leaves like those of Vaccinium.

Vaccin'ium: the ancient Latin name of the bilberry. The genus Vaccinium was published by Carl Linnaeus in 1753.

Vachel'lia: named for the Rev. George Harvey Vachell (1798-1839), a chaplain to the British East India Company in Macao from 1828-1836 and a plant collector in China. He was born in Littleport, Cambridgeshire, and graduated from Cambridge University in 1821. He collected plants in the vicinity in his spare time and discovered several new taxa. His collections were given to Rev. Prof. John Stevens Henslow of Cambridge, who passed them along to William Jackson Hooker and John Lindley. When a project was initiated to start a museum at the East India Campany factory, Vachell was named its curator, but it was never completed due to the East India Company's trade monopoly ending in 1834 and the disbandment of the factory. The genus Vachellia was published by Robert Wight and George Arnott Walker Arnott in 1834.

vac'illans: Stearn says variable, but other sources suggest the derivation is from Latin vacillatum, supine form of vacillo, “to sway, waver.” The Missouri Botanical Garden website says "vacillans, swinging to and fro, vacillating, swinging as the anthers of grasses, which swing lightly from the end of their filament.”

vagina'lis: same as next entry.

vagina'tum: sheathed, having a sheath, from vagīna, “a scabbard, sheath; a covering, or holder."

vaginiflor'us: with flowers in a sheath.

Vag'nera: named for German physician and surgeon Johann Gerhard Wagner (1706-1759), the co-author of Dissertatio Inavgvralis Medica De Matheseos In Medicina Ac Praesertim Practica Vtilitate (1731). He was born in Lubeck and was a member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina. The genus Vagnera was published by Michel Adanson in 1763.

va'gus: wandering, rambling, strolling. In California the taxon Erigeron vagus is commonly called rambling fleabane.

vahl'ii: named for Martin Henrichsen Vahl (1749-1804), a Norwegian-born Danish botanist, herbalist and zoologist

who studied under Linnaeus in Uppsala, Sweden, author of Eclogae Americanae seu Descriptiones Plantarum praesertim Americae Meridionalis nondum cognitarum. He was born in Bergen, Norway, and was schooled at the Bergen Cathedral School. He attended the University of Copenhagen studying botany and then at Uppsala University. He was one of the editors of Flora Danica and gave lectures at the University of Copenhagen Botanical Garden from 1779 to 1782.  Between 1783 and 1788 he made several research trips to other parts of Europe and North Africa,

and in 1786 he was appointed as a professor at the Society for Natural History at the University of Copenhagen. From 1801 until his death he was a full professor of botany. He had been elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1792. He is listed by the International Plant Name Index as the published author of many taxa and over 50 taxa were published with vahlii as the specific epithet, although I don’t know whether these were named for him or his son Jens Vahl (see following entry).  In California the species Carex vahlii and Fimbristylis vahlii were named for him. He died in Copenhagen.

Vahlod'ea: named for Jens Laurentius Moestue Vahl (1796-1854), Danish botanist and pharmacist, and son of Danish-Norwegian botanist and zoologist Martin Vahl (see previous entry). After graduating as a pharmacist in 1819, he studied botany and chemistry, then with financial support from King Christian VIII of Denmark made important botanical collections in both East and West Greenland (1828-1836) which he later donated to the University of Copenhagen. In 1838-1839, Vahl participated in a French expedition to Nordkapp and Spitsbergen, and in 1840 was made assistant at the Botanic Garden in Copenhagen. Much of his collection from Greenland formed the basis for Conspectus Florae Groenlandicae (1887-1894) by Johan Lange who picked up Vahl's work two decades after his death. Vahl published Flora Danica fasc. 38 with Salomon Drejer and Joakim Frederik Schouw. Two genera were named in his honor, Vahlodea which was published by Elias Magnus Fries in 1842 and Mostuea which was published in 1853 by Didrik Ferdinand Didrichsen.

vaillantia'na/vailant'ii: named for French botanist Sébastien Vaillant (1669-1722). He was born at Vigny and studied

medicine at Pontoise, then moved to Paris to practice as a surgeon, where he studied botany at the Jardin des Plantes under Joseph Pitton de Tournefort. In 1702 he was placed on the staff of the Jardin des Plantes and became a sub-demonstrator in 1708. He introduced the idea of the use of greenhouses into France and in 1716 entered the Academy of Sciences. A website of the Chicago Botanic Garden provides the following information: “Sébastien Vaillant was one of the most important scientists of his time in the early eighteenth century, organizing the King's garden in

Paris, systematically describing the flora of Paris and its environs, and communicating with colleagues and students all over the European continent. We know him today for his beautiful Botanicon Parisiense, published five years after his death in the Netherlands. This work itself is surrounded in mysteries, but scientifically Linnaeus trusted much of the content for inclusion in his magnum opus Species plantarum, the first global inventory of plants. Vaillant recognized the importance of the sexual anatomy of plants, before Linnaeus and many others in the eighteenth century. Some might argue that it was Vaillant who provided at least some of the intellectual fodder for Linnaeus in his taxonomic analysis of life on Earth. In any case, Vaillant announced his ideas quite clearly in a lecture at the Jardin du Roi in Paris on June 10, 1717. Historian Roger Lawrence Williams, in his masterful work Botanophilia in Eighteenth-Century France (2001), notes that Vaillant's lecture on that fateful morning was the true beginning of modern botany. For the students present at the lecture, it was both entertaining and shocking, because Vaillant was quite blunt in making analogs between plant and human sexuality (much like Linnaeus later in the century). It was a stunning lecture as well for essentially criticizing Joseph Pitton de Tournefort, the reigning authority on plant anatomy in France. Vaillant could not ignore some of Tournefort's errors (even if he was Tournefort's most significant and successful student in Paris), such as calling stamens mere excretory devices.” The story of the publication of his work on the flora of Paris, which was radical in its time and drew criticism from the French Academy of Sciences, is one that has been a source of some mystery, but the Chicago Botanic Garden website supplies what is I believe an accurate depiction of the actual events. “Legend has it that his work on the flora of Paris was incomplete at the time of his death, and that his Dutch colleague and friend Herman Boerhaave volunteered to take over the work and see that it was published and widely distributed. This legend is essentially taken from the introduction to Botanicon Parisiense and appears today in a variety of forms, even in Wikipedia. However, W.L. Tjaden discovered the real story behind the publication of Botanicon Parisiense through a careful examination of correspondence among Boerhaave, Vaillant, and other individuals, especially British botanist William Sherard (1659–1728). Sherard seems to have played an important role in helping Vaillant seek publication of his flora of Paris outside of France in the Netherlands, thanks to the incredible financial and intellectual support of Boerhaave. Sherard was well acquainted with the politics of botany in France, having spent a great deal of time at the Jardin du Roi, attending lectures by Tournefort. If anything, Sherard recognized the significance of Vaillant's work on the flora of Paris, since it really was the first modern flora in history, utilizing Vaillant's new discoveries on plant anatomy. Based on letters available in the Royal Society and elsewhere, it seems that Vaillant and Boerhaave were working together as early as 1718, some four years before Vaillant's death, on publication projects that certainly included his lectures on plant anatomy and the flora of Paris. These letters contradict the legend that Boerhaave promoted in Botanicon Parisiense of completing for publication an incomplete work given to him after Vaillant's death in 1722. Vaillant, Boerhaave, and Sherard had plenty of other commitments to prevent completion of Botanicon Parisiense in a timely fashion. The publication needed to be well illustrated, since it focused so heavily on the anatomy of specific plants. This illustrative work could not be left to just any artist so Boerhaave engaged, at considerable personal expense, the expertise of engraver Jan Wandelaar (1690–1759). Wandelaar was responsible for the excellent engravings in Linnaeus's Hortus Cliffortianus (1737). Botanicon Parisiense represented nearly four decades of work by Vaillant in and around Paris. His manuscript was carefully edited and checked by Boerhaave and other colleagues, and there seems to have been an exchange of dried specimens of the plants, figured in the work in advance of publication, to ensure accuracy of the final illustrations. Indeed, there was some concern on Vaillant's death about the sale of his cabinet by his widow to Louis XV for 12,000 livres (a breathtaking sum at the time), if some specimens were no longer accessible. In the end, Botanicon Parisiense set a standard to be matched only by Linnaeus in the eighteenth century with his Hortus Cliffortianus. Every flora that we use today can trace its origins back to Vaillant's groundbreaking efforts in understanding the true meaning of plant anatomy and in turn applying those discoveries to plant communities in his own neighborhood. It was an inspirational work at its original publication, and Botanicon Parisiense remains a riveting and beautiful work to this day.” He died in Paris.

valdivia'na: of or from the area of Valdivia, Chile.

valenti'na: of or from Valentia in Spain, Coronilla valentina is called Mediterranean crownvetch and is in the California flora only as a plant occurring under cultivation (e.g., as crop, ornamental, or experimental plant).

valeran'di: named for Valérand Dourez (c.1530-c.1575), a French botanist of Lyon. The Journal of British and Foreign Botanists, says Dourez was born in Lille, Flanders, and might have been related by marriage to the more famous botanist Johann Bauhin. Dourez leaned more toward chemistry than to botany, and he would be referred to as a pharmacist. His botanical travels included the Alps, Greece and Syria. His name has been sometimes listed as Dourez Valérand but this appears to have been a mistaken reversal.

Valeria'na: a medieval Latin name which has several possible etymologies, either referring to the personal name Valerius (which was a fairly common name in Rome, Publius Valerius being the name of a consul in the early years of the Republic), or to the country of Valeria, a province of the Roman empire, about which a website on Roman history says "The country was bordered along the Danube to the east and north, with Noricum and Northern Italia to the west, and with Dalmatia and Moesia to the south. Its original inhabitants, Pannonii, sometimes called Paeonii by the Greeks, were an Illyrian tribe. From the 4th century BCE it was invaded by various Celtic tribes, the largest of whom were the Carni, Scordisci and Tauriscito." Gledhill refers to a Valerius who apparently was the first one to use it medicinally. Another possibility is the word valere, "to be healthy and strong" from its use as a folk medicine in the treatment of nervousness and hysteria. The genus Valeriana was published by Carl Linnaeus in 1753.

Valerianel'la: a diminutive of Valeriana. The genus Valerianella was published by Philip Miller in 1754.

va'lida/va'lidum: strong in some sense such as smell.

Valles'ia: named for Francisco Valles de Covarrubias (1524-1592), a Spanish physician, the greatest Spanish exponent

of Renaissance medicine. He was born in Covarrubias, a town in the province of Burgos. His father was also a doctor. He studied in several European cities and made contact with Andrea Vesalius, the personal physician of King Philip II of Spain. He served most of his life in Alcalá de Henares, where he taught medicine, and was the first in Alcalá to teach medicine for the body. In 1544 he began his studies at the University of Alcalá at the Trilingual College, reaching a degree in arts and philosophy in 1547, becoming a master in arts and philosophy in 1553. In 1553 he graduated in

medicine, and became a doctor in 1554. He was a professor, at least since 1556, teaching practical anatomy through dissection of corpses. In 1557 he succeeded Cristóbal de Vega in the chair of Prima de Medicina in Alcalá until 1572. He was a great humanist and writer, and mastered both classical Greek and Latin. He published many works during his career. He was married for 42 years with Juana de Vera, with whom he had six children. He died in Burgos. The genus Vallesia was published by Hipólito Ruiz López and José Antonio Pavón in 1794.

vallico'la/vallico'lum: from the Latin vallis/valles, "valley," and with the -cola ending meaning "dwelling in or inhabiting a valley."

val'lis-mort'ae: of or from Death Valley, California. 

Vallisner'ia: named for Antonio Vallisneri (1661-1730), an Italian physician and naturalist. He was born in Trassilico

near Modena, studied medicine at Bologna, and graduated in medicine at Reggio Emilia in 1684 under the guidance of Marcello Malpighi. He was the dominant Italian figure of his time in the field of medical and natural sciences, and is known for being one of the first researchers in medicine to have proposed abandoning the Aristotelian theories for an experimental approach based on the scientific principles suggested by Galileo Galilei. He was influenced by famous thinkers such as Leibniz and Conti and worked in biology, botany, veterinary medicine, hydrology and the new

science of  geology. Vallisneri stated that scientific knowledge is best acquired through experience and reasoning. This principle was followed in his anatomical dissections and carefully drawn descriptions of insects. For this reason, his medical career was at the center of heated controversy, as many of his contemporaries could not abandon prevailing medieval theories, even in the face of glaring experimental evidence. He also was keenly interested in the natural sciences, and over his lifetime collected numerous specimens of animals, minerals and other natural objects. He studied at Bologna, Venice, Padua and Parma and held the chairs of Practical Medicine first and Theoretical Medicine later at the University of Padua between 1700 and his death, and was a member of the Royal Society of London. Vallisneri also followed Galilei's path in electing Italian as the language of choice for writing his treatises. This was a courageous choice in the scientific community of the time, which still used Latin as the language of knowledge. As a biologist and anatomist Vallisneri also produced a number of treatises on such unfamiliar animals as the ostrich (1712) and the chameleon (1715). His studies of a group of aquatic plants led to the genus Vallisneria being named for him. He died in Padua.The genus Vallisneria was published by Carl Linnaeus in 1753 and is called water-celery.

vancouveren'sis: of or from Vancouver.

Vancouver'ia: named for Captain George Vancouver (1759-1798), British naval officer and explorer, born in King's

Lynn, Norfolk, of Dutch ancestry and descended from the titled Van Coeverden family. He enlisted in the Royal Navy at age 14 and through contacts made with maritime officials by his father Jasper Vancouver, a customs collector, secured a position in 1772 on the second of the three great voyages to the Pacific captained by James Cook aboard the Resolution. He benefitted by receiving rigorous training in seamanship, navigation and surveying from both Cook and the astronomer William Wales. It was on this voyage that the Resolution went south to determine the existence of the fabled

Antarctic continent. On his second voyage with Cook, he was assigned to the Resolution's smaller companion vessel, the Discovery, and this was a voyage to discover the Northwest Passage. He next served on several vessels in the West Indies, rising to 2nd in command of the Europa. A threat from Spain, which claimed the North American coast from California to Cook Inlet, resulted in his being posted to the Courageous as part of a naval squadron intended to confront the Spanish, who had occupied Nootka Sound, built a fortified position there, and seized three British ships that had entered the harbor. Fortunately, war was averted, and Vancouver's mission changed to meeting with the Spanish to settle the matter amicably, survey the coast from California to Alaska, and determine whether an entrance to the Northwest Passage actually existed. He followed Cook's route, around the Cape of Good Hope to Australia (the southwest corner of which Vancouver was the first to explore), New Zealand, Tahiti and Hawaii, reaching California in one year's time. He spent three seasons charting the waters and mapping the coastline, and it was during this time that he established the insularity of the island that was to bear his name. Each year as winter appproached, the Discovery (a different ship from Cook's Discovery) would turn south to California and Hawaii, becoming the first foreign vessel to enter San Francisco Bay, and in 1794 Vancouver was able to persuade the Hawaiian King Kamehameha and the other district chiefs to cede the lands under their control to England, something which the Napoleonic Wars prevented England from capitalizing on. Vancouver returned to England by way of Cape Horn, thus completing a circumnavigation of the globe. This had been one of the longest survey voyages in history, sailing well over 100,000km. Upon its conclusion Vancouver was in ill health, and after working on his journal with his brother John, died at the early age of 40. He had discovered and explored Puget Sound which he named after one of his officers, he saw and named Mt. Baker and Mt. Rainier, and he was able to disprove the existence of an entrance to the Northwest Passage, at least to the highest latitude he explored, and is recognized by history as one of the great maritime adventurers. Most sources list the year of his birth as 1757, however others list 1758 or 1759. The genus Vancouveria was published by Charles François Antoine Morren and Joseph Decaisne in 1834.

vandenbergen'sis: named for Vandenberg Air Force Base, type locality for the taxon Diplacus vandenbergensis, the Vandenberg monkeyflower.

vanes'sae: named for botanist Vanessa Beth Beauchamp (1976- ), daughter of R. Mitchel Beauchamp, who was the author of A Flora of San Diego County.

vanrensselae'ri: named for Maunsell Van Rensselaer (1897-1972). A website of the Berkeley College of Environ-

mental Design. provides this information: "Maunsell Van Rensselaer was born in Los Angeles and spent his entire life in California. He graduated from the University of California, Berkeley in 1923.  Van Rensselaer worked for what is now called the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden, serving initially in 1934 as Assistant Director, and was then later appointed to Director from 1936 to 1950. He was instrumental in having the redwood adopted as California’s official state tree in 1937. Serving as its chairman from 1943 to 1945, Van Rensselaer was a member of the Santa Barbara Board of Park

Commissioners for many years, as well as a member of the Royal Horticultural Society, the Mexican Botanical Society, and the American Association of Botanic Gardens and Arboretums. He authored Trees of Santa Barbara, which was published in 1940 by the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden, Inc. In 1943, he was awarded the Gold Medal of the Garden Club of America as the co-author of Ceanothus (with Howard E. McMinn, professor of botany at Mills College. It was published by the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden in 1942.) In addition, he authored hundreds of articles for horticultural publications and made countless presentations on botanical subjects. In 1950, he and nurseryman Ray Hartman co-founded the Saratoga Horticultural Foundation in Los Altos. Several dozen of the plant varieties they engineered were patented. Van Rensselaer served as director from 1950 to 1971. During this time, he was president for the International Shade Tree Conference in the early 1960s and a member of the Advisory Council of the California Foundation for Horticultural Research and the Arboretum Committee at the University of California, Santa Cruz. In 1965, Van Rensselaer was named to the Horticultural Hall of Fame." He was married to Eleanor Olmsted White and had two children. He botanized on Santa Cruz Island in 1936. The taxon in California with this epithet is Ceanothus X vanrensselaeri.

vanzuuk'iae: named for Kathy Ann Maxson Van Zuuk (Mrs. Marc Roy Van Zuuk) (1951- ), Tahoe National Forest botanist.

var'ia: diverse, different or differing, various, variegated, from Latin varius.

varia'bilis: variable, varying.

variega'ta/variega'tum: variegated, i.e. different in some way, from late Latin variegāre. “to make of various sorts or colors,” from Latin varius, “various,” and agere, “to make, do.”

variic'olor: diversely-colored. The taxon in the California flora with this epithet is Lupinus littoralis var. variicolor, called varied lupine.

Va'seya/va'seyi: named for Dr. George S. Vasey (1822-1893), a physician and botanist who was born in Snainton,  

Scarborough County, England. Details are conflicting but his family moved to Oriskany, New York in either 1823 or 1828. He attended school until the age of 12 and then worked as a store clerk, during which time he became interested in botany. Unable to purchase a copy of his own, he borrowed and then manually copied Almira Hart Lincoln's Elements of Botany, which he read and studied assiduously. He also fortuitously happened to meet the naturalist Peter D. Knieskern, who subsequently introduced him to John Torrey and Asa Gray. Vasey studied at and graduated from

the Oneida Institute in 1841 and then studied medicine, graduating in 1846 from Berkshire Medical Institute with an MD degree, and becoming a doctor. He got married that same year, shortly thereafter moving to Ringwood, Illinois, and in 1854 opened a dry goods store to support his family. In 1858, being unable to escape the pull of botany, he became a member of the Illinois Natural History Association. By 1861 he had six children but his youngest died in 1864 and then his wife died two years later, but he very quickly remarried. Also in 1864 he was granted an honorary MA from Illinois Wesleyan University. Through his new botanical connections he met Major John Wesley Powell, a fellow self-taught scientist, who invited him to join his Colorado Expedition of 1868, and he traveled with Powell through the Rockies all that summer, returning to Denver with a good collection of specimens. In 1869 he was made a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He briefly edited the journal  Entomologist and Botanist. He was subsequently appointed curator of the Natural History Museum in the State Normal University of Illinois, a position he resigned to become the first botanist of the Department of Agriculture and curator of the U. S. National Herbarium. He built up the national herbarium to be one of the greatest in the world. He published a several-volume monograph of the United States grasses, the last portion of which was published after his death, and in 1884 he published Agricultural Grasses of the United States. He was also the author of a number of other works on American grasses. He was a member of the Geographical Society of Washington and the Biological Society of Washington, and in 1892 was one of the vice-presidents at the Botanical Congress at Genoa, representing the USDA and the Smithsonian. He was the father of plant collector George Richard Vasey (1852-1921) (see next entry). He died of peritonitis in the District of Columbia in 1893. The genus Vaseya was published by George Thurber in 1863. (Agropyron vaseyi, Haplopappus lanceolatus ssp. vaseyi, Koeleria vaseyi)

va'seyana/va'seyi: named for George Richard Vasey (1853-1921) who collected plants in California for the government in 1876 and 1880 and later settled in Washington state. He was born in Illinois the son of the English-born George S. Vasey (1822-1893) (see previous entry) who was a doctor, owner of a dry goods store and later botanist and plant collector with the US Department of Agriculture). Not a great deal of information is available about George Richard Vasey but David Hollombe provided this: "He collected a lot in the mid-late 1870s, including California in 1876. He doesn't seem to have been working directly for the US government at that time. He was hired to study forest resources for the Census Office in 1880, which brought him to California again. By 1883 he was farming near Steptoe, WA, and he was still there in 1903. He was a member of the central committee of the Whitman County Democratic party in 1892.  He again did forestry studies for the USDA from July through October of 1889. He was single as of the 1900 census." He further discovered that Vasey left Washington state around 1905 or 1906 to homestead in Alberta, which is where he died. The Wiki Tree website has 1851 as the year of his birth but David and Find-a-Grave say 1853. (Astragalus vaseyi, Cirsium hydrophilum var. vaseyi, Eryngium vaseyi, Lomatium vaseyi, Opuntia X vaseyi, Porophyllum vaseyi, Salvia vaseyi, Senecio vaseyi)

vasifor'mis: probably having the shape of a vase from its distinctive funnel-shaped corolla.

vauch'eri: named for Jean Pierre Étienne Vaucher (1763-1841), a Swiss Protestant pastor and botanist. The following

is quoted from Wikipedia: “He studied theology at Geneva, and from 1795 to 1821 was a pastor at the Church of Saint-Gervais. From 1808 to 1840 he was a professor of church history at the University of Geneva, and for a number of years he also taught classes in botany. Among his better-known students were botanist Augustin Pyramus de Candolle, scientist Hans Conrad Escher von der Linth and Charles-Albert, the future King of Sardinia. Vaucher is remembered for his research involving the developmental history of algae. In his 1803 treatise Histoire des Conferves d'eau

douce, he described the process of conjugation in certain algae as a distinct sexual process. The phenomena of conjugation is a means of fertilization that takes place in green algae such as Spirogyra. He is credited for describing the development of the networks that occur in the cells of Hydrodictyon (water net algae), and for describing the pyrenoid of algae.” The genus of yellow-green algae called Vaucheria was named in his honor.

veatchia'na: named for Andrew Allen Veatch (c.1832-1871), mining engineer, scientist and artist of note. He was born in Covington, Louisiana, son and one of eight children of John Allen Veatch. His family moved to Texas where he grew up. In Texas in 1847, after serving as a Captain in the Texas Mounted Volunteers, his father had raised a military company in which his two eldest sons were enrolled and one of them was Andrew Allen. In the early days of the gold rush he went to California. He panned for gold for several years, part of the time with his father. In 1863-1864, while his father was living in Virginia City, Nevada, he was the superintendent of the reduction works of the Central Mill of that place. He studied mining and became one of the foremost mining engineers in the country. He married Annie Smith in California and had two children, John Allen and May. He died at the Erie Mine in Graniteville, 11 March 1871, and was buried in Graniteville in the Sierra Nevada Mts. The species Mentzelia veatchiana was named for him. (Information from We Veitches, Veatches, Veaches, Veeches: an historical treasury of the descendants of James Veitch, the Sheriffe by Wanda Veatch Clark, 1974)

veitchia'na: named for the Veitch family, nurserymen: John Veitch (1752-1832) (top left), James Veitch (1792-1863)

		(middle left), James Veitch (1815-1869) (bottom left), Robert Tosswill Veitch (1823-1885), et. al. The Scottish horticulturist John Veitch created the Exeter based firm of Veitch Nurseries, which was the largest and most significant group of family-run plant nurseries in Europe during the 19th century, and had a long and complicated history involving many family members. John Veitch was born in Ancrum near Jedburgh and his father was the gardener at Ancrum House. John received a sound primary education including some instruction in Latin. He worked for his father, then as an apprentice in the nursery Robert Dickson & Son, Scotland’s leading nursery, in nearby Hassendean. He then managed to transfer his apprenticeship to James Lee at his Vineyard nursery in Hammersmith. It was James Lee who recommended Veitch to Sir Thomas Dyke Acland, 7th Baronet at Killerton House, Broadclyst, and it was Sir Thomas who granted him financial support and estate land to establish his first nursery at Budlake, near Killerton. Exactly when he established his own nursery is unclear, with some sources saying as early as 1800 and others saying as late as 1830, but in point of fact it probably evolved over a number of years.  But in any event he was married sometime around 1780 to Anna Davidson. They had three sons and three daughters. His eldest son John died at sea while a midshipman in the Royal Navy, and his second, Thomas, about whom not much is known, apparently did horticultural work with his father at least for a time. His name also appears on the deed for another tract of land called Brockhill which was a subsidiary nursery. John’s third son, James, carried on the family business. John Veitch and his son James

bought 25 acres of land at Mount Radford in Exeter in order to start his own nursery. He alsoopened a seed warehouse at 54 High Street, Exeter. He was married in 1814 to Mary Tosswill, and his son, James Jr. was born the following year. An arrangement at the Killerton estate evolved between father and son where James Sr. took care of the flowering plants while John was mostly responsible for trees and the fruit tree business. Two years after handing the nursery business to James Sr., John died at Budlake in 1832. The original nursery was eventually split into two separate businesses based at Chelsea and Exeter as it became unfeasible to run the whole operation from one location. Veitch and his wife, Anna Davidson, had six children, including James, who helped his father on the Killerton estate from a very early age. As the nursery business expanded, Veitch rented more land before moving the operation to larger premises at Mount Radford, Exeter, in 1832. He was soon succeeded in the business by his son, James and grandson James Jr., with James Sr. taking over the Exeter nursery, while James Jr. was sent to London to train there for two years as a nurseryman, before returning to Exeter, where he helped his father improve and expand the Exeter nursery, before acquiring premises in Chelsea, London. When Sir Thomas Dyke Acland, 10th Baronet resurrected the landscaping projects at Killerton, James introduced many of his own ideas and working methods, and some of the mature Spanish chestnuts and beech trees on the estate are a testament to this work. James Sr. took over after his father’s death in 1832 and the nursery continued to flourish and expand with the purchase of 25 acres of land at Mount Radford on the Topsham Road, Exeter. He also established a number of shops and seed warehouses. In 1839 James Veitch Sr. extended the nurseries still further by renting 30 acres of land at Poltimore known as the "Bramberries." His son James Jr. was sent to London to train with nurserymen and he eventually established the family business by acquiring the Royal Exotic Nursery business of Knight and Perry on the Kings Road in Chelsea, London. James Jr. was an industrious and astute businessman, and a skilled horticulturist. He was married in 1838 to Harriott Reynolds Gould. From 1856 to 1864, he was an active member of the Council of the Royal Horticultural Society. Among other contributions, he instigated the formation of the RHS Fruit and Floral Committees. Another son of James Jr. was Robert Veitch who also a significant horticulturist. He spent some time farming on the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa, before returning to England to join the family nursery company in 1856. He took over the Exeter branch of the family nursery business, which became Robert Veitch & Sons. Robert moved the nursery to New North Road in 1864, and opened another seed warehouse in the High Street. He was joined in 1880 by his son, Peter, who had traveled extensively in his youth. Peter brought his experiences of French and German nurseries into the company as well as an element of flair from the Chelsea, London nursery. Robert landscaped many Exeter parks as well as the Higher Cemetery. Following Robert’s death in 1885, his son Peter became head of the Exeter branch of the business. By the outbreak of the First World War the firm had introduced 1,281 plants into cultivation, which were either previously unknown or newly-bred varieties. These included 498 greenhouse plants, 232 orchids, 153 deciduous trees, shrubs and climbing plants, 122 herbaceous plants, 118 exotic ferns, 72 evergreen and climbing plants, 49 conifers, and 37 ornamental bulbous plants. In the years to come, more plants followed. The nurseries were most famous for their orchids, although they also introduced several famous plants from other families, such as Nepenthes rajah and Nepenthes northiana. The pitcher plant species N. veitchii was named in honor of the Veitch dynasty. The Chelsea business ceased to trade in 1914, whilst the Exeter business continued under Peter Veitch and later his daughter Mildred. She in turn sold the firm in 1969, when it was bought by St Bridget Nurseries. The business was run as a separate business for a further 20 years, but is now a subsidiary of St Bridget. Information mostly from Wikipedia and an excellent article in Garden History by S. Heriz-Smith entitled "The Veitch Nurseries of Killerton and Exeter c. 1780 to 1863."

veatch'ii: named for Dr. John Allen Veatch (1808-1870), a surveyor, physician, botanist and curator of conchology at

the California Academy of Science who came to California during the gold rush. He was born in Kentucky (although the website "The Veatch Family in America" says it was Indiana), the first of eight children. His mother died in 1822 and the family moved to Spencer County, Indiana. At 19 he was back in Kentucky where he began his medical studies in 1827 in Louisville, Kentucky, with a Dr. John Work and associating with him in practice. After becoming a Mason he moved to Louisiana in 1829 where he worked as a teacher. He then resettled to Texas in 1834 where he

became a substantial landholder and participated in various military organizations aimed at frontier defense. He was elected as a delegate from the municipality of Bevil to the Consultation of 1835, which was the provisional government of Mexican Texas from November 1835 to March 1836 during the Texas Revolution. Sam Houston's nomination of Veatch as notary public for Liberty County in 1840 was rejected by the Texas Senate. He worked as a doctor in the 1840s in Town Bluff and then was a First Lieutenant in Mirabeau B. Lamar's Independent Volunteer Company and a Captain in the Texas Mounted Volunteers for frontier defense September, 1847, to September,1848, serving as a surgeon part of that time.  By 1850 he was in San Antonio and amassed $15,000 in real property. Having studied both botany and minerology, and having heard of gold out west, he moved to California where in 1856 he discovered large deposits of borax in Lake County. He delivered several scientific papers, explored Carros Island off Lower California in 1858, and was curator of conchology in the California Academy of Sciences from 1858 to 1861. He then relocated to Nevada where he was a doctor in Virginia City from 1862 to 1863, and then worked as a geologist in San Francisco until 1869 when after failing to procure the post of state geologist of Oregon in 1868, he became a professor of chemistry, toxicology and materia medica at Willamette University Medical School in Portland, Oregon’s first medical school which later became the University of Oregon School of Medicine.  He was married three times: his first and third wives died, and his second wife divorced him on grounds of abandonment when he went to California. He died of pneumonia in Portland. Veatch had once owned what would later be some of the most valuable land in Texas, acreage at Sour Lake and Spindletop oilfields, where oil was discovered fifty years after Veatch left to seek his fortune in California. He was honored by Albert Kellogg who published the genus Veatchia in the Alliaceae in 1863 and by Asa Gray who published the genus Veatchia in the Anacardiaceae in 1884, the latter genus now considered illegitimate. He also had many species veatchii and veatchiana named for him. Much of the preceding was extracted from a website of the Texas State Historical Association, and a long blog article in a website called Colorado Earth Science. Although he studied botany at one time, I can find no information about any botanical excursions he might have undertaken, or plant samples he might have collected, that would have justified his name being used for genera or species. (Photo credit: Find-a-Grave)

Velez'ia: named for Cristóbal Vélez (1710?-1753), a friend of the botanist Pehr Loefling. The following information is from a website called I nomi delle piante (The Names of Plants): This website entry references as sources letters from Loefling to Linnaeus and/or documents of the institutions to which he belonged. “Cristóbal Vélez was a Madrid pharmacist, presumably born around 1710 in Castillejo, near Cuenca. He had studied botany with Joan Minuart. In 1751 he was secretary of the College of Pharmacists who also commissioned him to teach botany to aspiring pharmacists, according to the method of Tournefort which was officially recognized. When Loefling arrived in Madrid, he hosted him at his house, placing his large library at his disposal. According to the Swede, he was an excellent botanist and was collecting materials for a flora of the Madrid region; he donated some specimens to his friend who in turn offered to help him complete the Flora of Madrid. In addition to the Madrid region, he carried out botanical explorations of the Kingdom of Cordoba. At his early death, which occurred in 1753 after a five-week illness, the work was far from being ready. His herbarium and notes were used by Josep Quer for his Flora española.” The genus Velezia was published by Carl Linnaeus in 1753.

velu'tina/velu'tinum/velu'tinus: velvety, from the Latin vellus, meaning "fleece, wool, or down."

Venegas'ia: named for Padre Miguel Venegas (1680-1764), a Jesuit scholar, administrator and historian at a seminary at Puebla, Mexico. He was born in Puebla, New Spain (Mexico). He was awarded an academic degree before he joined the Jesuit order in 1700 in Tepotzotlán. By 1705 he was an ordained member and taught philosophy and moral theology at the Colegio San Pedro y San Pablo in Mexico City. Because of ill health he was forced to retire to the Jesuit ranch of Chicomocelo, where he devoted himself to writing and botany until his death in 1764. He was assigned in the mid-1730s the task of writing an account of Baja California and he produced a 600-page manuscript entitled  Empresas Apostólicas  which was completed in 1739. This was his major work and it was extensively revised by another Jesuit historian, Andrés Marcos Burriel, and published in three volumes, Noticia de la California (1757), a geographical, historical, and ethnographic description of an area Venegas had never himself personally visited, but which became the standard source for information about the early Californias. The genus Venegasia was published in 1838 by Augustin Pyramus de Candolle.

venenos'um: very poisonous, from Latin venenum, "poison."

vene'ta/vene'tus: my original assumption that this name means "of Venice" (almost every classical name I have encountered has something to do with Venice), and both Stearn and Gledhill say that venetus means of Venice, Italy. Edmund Jaeger's Sourcebook of Biological Names and Terms gives "sea-colored or bluish" for the Latin venetus, and David Hollombe contributes that "The typical ssp. of Haplopappus venetus was first described as Baccharis veneta Kunth, and first collected at Cuernavaca. It was described as having glaucescent leaves." Glaucous is defined as "coated with a whitish or bluish waxy bloom." David also found a listing in the Oxford Latin Dictionary for uenetus and defined as "sea-blue, " so I think that's the correct meaning. Roland Brown's Composition of Scientific Words also gives, "sea-colored, blue." The Missouri Botanical Garden's A Grammatical Dictionary of Botanical Latin says "venetus,-a,-um: bluish-green, aeruginose, venice-blue; 'of or belonging to the Veneti, Venetian; (perhaps taken from the color of the sea on the coast) sea-colored, bluish' (Lewis & Short, A Latin Dictionary, 1969)."

Venid'ium: from the Latin vena for "vein," from the ribs of the fruits, plus the suffix -idium, which is a diminutive. The genus Venidium was published by Christian Friedrich Lessing in 1831.

veno'sa: conspicuously veined, from Latin venosus "full of veins."

Ventena'ta: named for French botanist, librarian, clergyman and author Étienne Pierre Ventenat (1757-1808). He was born in Limoges (Haute-Vinne), France, and his brother was the naturalist Louis Ventenat. He graduated as a priest and worked as the director of the Sainte-Geneviève Church Library in Paris. During this time he took a trip to England and visited that country’s botanical gardens which inspired him to study botany. After returning to France, he attended lectures given by botanist Charles Louis de L'Héritier de Brutelle, and later collaborated intensively with him. Wikipedia says: “In 1794 he wrote a treatise on the principles of botany titled Principes de botanique, expliqués au Lycée républicain par Ventenat. After publication he became so disappointed with its mediocrity that he reportedly made efforts to procure all copies of the book and have them destroyed. In 1795 he was elected a member of the Institut national des sciences et des arts, later known as the Académie des sciences. He was married in 1797. In 1798 he published a French translation of Antoine-Laurent de Jussieu's Genera plantarum as Tableau du règne végétal selon la méthode de Jussieu. In his translation of the work, Ventenat added information involving the properties and uses of plants. In 1799 he published Description des plantes nouvelles et peu connues, cultivées dans le jardin de J.-M. Cels, a work that described flora in the botanical garden of Jacques Philippe Martin Cels (1740–1806), and in 1803 he published Le Jardin de la Malmaison, being written at the request of Joséphine de Beauharnais (1763–1814), who wished to immortalize the rare species of plants found in the gardens and greenhouses of Château de Malmaison. The illustrations in the two aforementioned works were performed by famed botanical artist Pierre-Joseph Redouté (1759–1840). Ventenat is also credited with continuing the work on Jean Baptiste François Pierre Bulliard's Histoire des champignons de la France, a landmark work on mushrooms native to France.” JSTOR indicates that he collected in Madagascar, but I can’t find any independent confirmation of that. The genus Ventenata was published in 1802 by Georg Ludwig Koeler.

Ven'tia: named for German botanist Walter Vent (1920-2008), born in Suhl, Thuringia. His collections are at the Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin. He was a student of the Rhamnaceae. The genus Ventia was published by Frank Hauenschild in 2016.

ventrico'sa/ventrico'sum: Stearn says "having a swelling on one side," from the Latin venter, "belly, womb" and -osa, "abundance," and ventricosus, "swollen or inflated, pot-bellied." Gledhill says "bellied out below, distended to one side, expanded, ventricose." In California Chorizanthe ventricosa is called pot-bellied chorizanthe or pot-bellied spineflower, and Gastridium ventricosum also bears this specific epithet although its common name does not reflect this meaning.

venus'ta/venus'tum/venus'tus: charming, handsome, from Latin venustus, "charming, elegant."

ve'ra: true.

Verat'rum: truly-black. FNA says from Latin vere, "true," and ater, "black," alluding to black rhizomes found in some species. Other sources say that veratrum literally means hellebore, and was the ancient name of the Hellebore, a genus of about 20 species in the Ranunculaceae, commonly called winter rose, Christmas rose or Lenten rose, names which wrongly imply a relationship with the Rosaceae. Wiktionary says: "Etymology unclear, perhaps from vere, 'truly, verily,' and ‎ ater, 'dull black, dark,' or perhaps related to vero, 'to tell the truth,' on the grounds that it cures people of their mental illness, or perhaps a separate derivation from Proto-Indo-European wreyt, 'to twist, writhe.' " And Stearn gives the name false hellebore for Veratrum. The genus Veratrum was published by Carl Linnaeus in 1753.

Verbas'cum: corrupted form of Barbascum, the ancient Latin name for this plant, which means "with a beard," in reference to the hairy surfaces of the leaves, stems and bracts of this mullein. The genus Verbascum was published by Carl Linnaeus in 1753.

Verbe'na: sacred bough, an ancient Latin name of the common European vervain, a plant sacred to the ancient Romans, and used in religious ceremonies and medicine. Pliny the Elder describes verbena being placed on altars to Jupiter. It is not entirely clear if this referred to a verbena rather than to the general term for prime sacrificial herbs, the leaves and shoots of laurel, myrtle, olive and others. The genus Verbena was published by Carl Linnaeus in 1753.

verbena'cea: since -acea is a Latin adjectival suffix indicating resemblance, this would then seem to mean "resembling Verbena."

Verbesi'na: verbena-like from the resemblance of the leaves to those of Verbena. The genus Verbesina was published in 1753 by Carl Linnaeus.

verecun'da: modest, blushing, from Latin verecundus, "modest," from vereor, "revere, fear."

verit'yi: named for David Schofield Verity (1930-2020), a noted entomologist, horticulturist, botanist, senior museum

scientist and curator of the Mildred Mathias Botanical Garden at UCLA. He received a BS in floriculture and ornamental horticulture from UCLA College of Agriculture in 1957. He collected some 31,000 insect specimens from the western United States and Mexico. During his time as curator of the Mildred E. Mathias Botanical Garden at UCLA from the 1960s to the 1990s he created a number of aloe hybrids, primarily of larger landscape species. One bears his name: Aloe 'David Verity'. He was also involved with mapping rare plants in the Santa Monica Mountains of

Southern California. An obituary in a UCLA website provides this: "Born in Los Angeles in 1930, Verity was a native Californian. After serving in the military during the Korean War, he enrolled at UCLA and graduated in 1959 with a degree in ornamental horticulture. His horticultural studies were supplemented by a strong campus curriculum in botany, led by Mathias. Shortly after graduating, he began working as a nurseryman in the botanical garden. His love for and dedication to the garden and its plants continued for 33 years, and he spent most of this time in charge of the collection as garden manager. He retired in 1992. Under Verity’s management, UCLA’s botanical garden has become an oasis of biodiversity. It currently houses more than 3,000 plants. Verity made major contributions to Southern California horticulture by cultivating new drought-tolerant plants from his personal international collections. He also worked with Mathias to propagate seeds that she brought back from her travels, and this led to a major expansion of the garden’s plant collection. Verity’s careful plant breeding work led to new hybrids that are widely planted in gardens today, including, most notably, aloes, bush monkeyflowers, iochromas, and prides of Madeira. This work and his decades-long leadership role with the Southern California Horticultural Society made him a living legend. The immense respect he received among his colleagues is demonstrated by the many plant species, Buprestid beetles and crab spiders named in his honor. Beyond his interest in plants, Verity was long fascinated, like Charles Darwin, by beetles. Over the course of his life he assembled a massive and scientifically valuable collection of Buprestid beetles, also known as metallic woodboring or jeweled beetles. He donated his personal collection of nearly 44,000 specimens to the Bohart Museum of Entomology at UC Davis in 2016."

vermicula'tus: worm-like, from vermiculus, "little worm."

ver'na/ver'num: of spring, from vernus, "spring." One of the names of Barbarea verna is spring wintercress.

vernac'ula: native or native to a country. David Hollombe says "perhaps used in sense of 'native' as the plant had been previously identified with the European species Carex foetida." Brown's Composition of Scientific Words gives for Latin vernaculus, "of a home-born slave, domestic, indigenous, common." Wikipedia says vernacula comes from the Latin vernaculus, “domestic, indigenous, of or pertaining to home-born slaves.”

verna'lis: of spring, spring-flowering, fom Latin vernus, "of the spring."

vernico'sa: varnished or shiny, from Latin vernix, "varnish."

vernonio'ides: like or having the form of genus Vernonia.

Veron'ica: named for Saint Veronica, the woman who gave Jesus a cloth to wipe his face while on the way to Calvary, and when Jesus handed it back it bore an imprint of his face. Her Latin name is ultimately derived from Greek, Berenice. The genus name Veronica used in binomial nomenclature was chosen by Carl Linnaeus in 1753 based on preexisting common usage of the name veronica in many European languages for plants in this group. Such use in English is attested as early as 1572. The plant is so named because the markings on some species supposedly resemble those on Saint Veronica's sacred handkerchief.

verruco'sum/verruco'sus: warty, from the Latin verruca, "a wart."

versi'color: variously-colored, from verso, "turn."

verticilla'ta/verticilla'tum: whorled, from the Latin verticillatus, "having whorls," referring to the arrangement of the leaves upon the stem that radiate from a single point.

ve'rum: true to type, standard, genuine, from Latin verus, "true."

ves'ca: little, thin, feeble, edible, from Latin vescor, "to eat or feed on."

vesicar'ia: bladder-like, from Latin vesica, "bladder."

vesiculo'sum: with small bladders or vesicles.

Ves'per: named for Feng-Jie Sun (1968- ) and Stephen Roy Downie (1959- ). The genus Vesper was published by Ronald Lee Hartman and Guy L. Nesom in 2012. The explanation of this generic epithet was found in the website Southwest Colorado Wildflowers, and I quote: "The new name of the genus is from Latin, vesper, "evening or west," sometimes referring to the "evening star" (usually Venus) seen at sunset in the western sky. The name alludes to the team of Sun and Downie, who have provided molecular analyses (Feng-Jie Sun and Stephen R. Downie 2004, 2010; and including Downie et al. 2002) indicating that evolutionary relationships among many of the currently and historically recognized genera of western North American Apioideae are complex, apparently reticulate (This from Hartman and Nesom), As noted immediately above, the team that provided the molecular analyses showing the distinctive characteristics of this new genus was Sun and Downie which Nesom and Hartman conflated to sundown, sunset, evening, vesper.

vespertin'um: of the evening, evening-blooming.

ves'ta/ves'tae: when Carlton Elmer Purdy originally published this name, it was Calochortus vesta after his wife Vesta Moore Purdy (1863-1937), and then when it became a variant was changed to vestae presumably because it honored a woman. Thanks both to Dr. Siegmund Seybold of the Natural History Museum in Stuttgart and to David Hollombe for this iinformation. It is listed in the Flora of North America and JM2 as Calochortus vestae and is often referred to as Vesta's mariposa.

vesti'ta/vesti'tum/vesti'tus: covered, clothed, usually with hairs. Several sources relate that vestitus refers to "clothing, apparel, raiment, attire," or for inanimate things, a "cover, covering."

ves'tus: possibly from Latin vestis, "clothes, a covering," although since Carlton Purdy named this variety of Calochortus weedii, it was probably for his wife Vesta Moore Purdy (1863-1937).

vex'illo-calycula'tum: from the Latin vexillum, "a standard or flag," from velum, "a sail, curtain, vei," land calyculus, "a small flower bud." The taxon in California with this epithet is Antirrhinum vexillocalyculatum, commonly called wiry snapdragon, sailflower snapdragon or Brewer's snapdragon.

via'lis: ruderal, of the roadside, from the Latin vialis, "of or belonging to the highways or roads." The dictionary definition of ruderal is "growing whee the natural vegetational cover has been disturbed by man."

viburnifo'lium: with leaves like genus Viburnum.

Vibur'num: a classical Latin name for one species of this genus, V. lantana, the so-called wayfaring tree. It has been suggested that viburnum derives from some Etruscan word. The Jepson eflora page for Viburnum says "from Latin for pliable branches used in binding." The genus Viburnum was published by Carl Linnaeus in 1753.

Vic'ia: the classical Latin name used by Pliny for this genus. The genus Vicia was published by Carl Linnaeus in 1753.

viciifo'lia: with leaves like those of genus Vicia.

victor'is: named for Victor King Chesnut (1867-1938), an American botanist who worked at the US Department of

Agriculture where he initiated research on poisonous plants in 1894. He became known for his groundbreaking work on the plants used by native Americans, documenting their use through interviews and photographs. A website of Montana State University includes the following biographical information: "Victor King Chesnut was born in Nevada City, California on June 28, 1867. He attended high school in Oakland, California and college at the University of California, the University of Chicago, and George Washington University specializing in chemistry and

botany. He worked for the Bureau of Plant Industry, the US Department of Agriculture from 1894-1904, and as a professor of chemistry and geology at Montana Agricultural College (Montana State University) from 1904-1907. Following his work in Montana, Chesnut relocated to Washington, DC where he finished his career working in a variety of positions for the USDA. Letters, diary transcripts and research notes pertaining to the 1869 Cook-Folsom expedition into Yellowstone National Park were gathered or created by Chesnut during his employment at Bozeman, Montana (1904-1907) and Washington, DC (1921-1922). In 1904, Chesnut met Charles W. Cook, an elderly farmer living in White Sulphur Springs, Montana. Cook, along with David E. Folsom and William Peterson, had explored the Yellowstone National Park region in 1869 and recorded their journey in a joint ‘diary’ which appeared in edited form several times during the intervening years. Cook gave Chesnut his original manuscript version of the diary from which Chesnut prepared a typed transcript. The original was lost when he left it in the chemistry building at Montana Agricultural College which burned Oct. 20, 1916, thus Chesnut's transcription became the earliest extant record of the expedition.” In 1916-1917 he was one of the founders of and the first president of the Hyattsville Horticultural Society, one of the oldest gardening clubs in America. He was the author of Plants used by the Indians of Mendocino County, California, published in 1902 and "Ilex vomitoria as a Native Source of Caffeine," in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. He also conducted research on livestock losses and the poisonous plants that killed them. He retired in 1933 and died in Hyattsville, Maryland, in August, 1938. (Photo credit: Smithsonian Learning Lab)

viejasen'sis: name refers to Viejas Mountain in San Diego County.

Vig'nea: named for Ghislain Francois Delavigne (1767-1826), a French-born scientist, botanist, teacher, professor of botany at the Imperial Kharkov University, and one of the first professional botanists to work on the territory of the Russian Empire. At first he served as a pastor in Amiens, but left his homeland due to the French Revolution of 1792. He studied at the University of Gottingen, and in 1794-1799 he studied at the University of Erlangen, receiving a doctorate in medicine. He was a student of naturalist Johann Christian von Schreber, and  was the author of Flore germanique (“German flora”) which he dedicated to Schreber. He also produced a translation into French of Christian Schkuhr’s book on sedges, entitled Description and image of some known, some not yet described species of sedges according to our own observations and an enlarged image small parts, published from 1801 to 1806. He worked at Kharkov Imperial University from its foundation in 1804 until his death in 1826. He was the first head of the department of natural history and botany there, the first director of the Kharkov University Botanical Garden, headed the zoological office, which later became the famous Kharkov Museum of Nature, and for a number of years was elected dean of the physics and mathematics department of the university. He was also the author in 1802 of History of sedges or sedges containing the description and colored figures of all known species and a large number of new species. Among his students was the botanist Vasilii Matveievitch Czernajew. The genus Vignea was published by Thémistocle Gaspard Lestiboudois in 1821.

Viguier'a: named for Louis Guillaume Alexandre Viguier (1790-1867), a French physician and botanist who was born in Montpellier, and had several taxa named after him as well as the genus Viguiera which was published by Karl Sigismund Kunth in 1820. He was also an assistant librarian of the Faculty of Medicine of Montpellier and a correspondent of the Society of Medicine of the Gard (?). He may have also been a bookseller and he apparently collected plants in South Africa. He published works on the town of Anduze and he is the author of a thesis in medicine: l'Histoire naturelle, médicale et économique, des pavots et des argémones. Little information available about him online.

Villano'va: named for Tomás Manuel Villanova y Muñoz Puyanos (1737-1802), a Spanish doctor, scholar, and professor of chemistry at the University of Valencia. He was born in Bigastro in the province of Alicante. It’s unclear where he received his early studies but he continued his medical career at the University of Valencia and was awarded a medical doctorate. His broad interests led him to also study privately physics, chemistry, philosophy, botany, mathematics, pharmacy, hydrodynamics, electricity, and astronomy among others. In addition he took up studies in foreign languages such as Latin, Greek and Arabic and made trips to France, Italy, Germany and Hungary, and during that two-year period he created a herbarium of about a thousand plants that he classified according to the Linnaeus system. He translated the works of Antoine Baumé and became a corresponding member of the Royal Botanic Garden of Madrid. He also wrote works related to mathematics, botany, physics and medicine, most of which were handwritten, and published a work on his observations of the course of the recently-discovered planet Uranus. After holding the chair of Hippocratic Aphorisms of Medicine around 1780, he held the chair of chemistry and botany until his death. The genus Villanova was published by Mariano Lagasca y Segura in 1816.

Villar'sia: named for Dominique Villars (1745-1814), a French physician and botanist. He was born as part of the

commune in Noyer-en-Champsaur (Hautes-Alpes). His father owned a small estate and was the clerk of the community. Young Dominique had only rudimentary education as a lad and was entrusted with the care of a small flock of sheep and goats. It was during this period that he apparently became interested in gathering wildflowers. His father died when he was fifteen and his mother placed him in the care of a local attorney. While spending time in the attorney’s offices, he discovered an old book illustrated with plants drawn by the Italian physician Pietro Andrea

Gregorio Mattioli, and then met a man who spent his time roaming the countryside selling plants and promoting herbal tea recipes. Villars was drawn to this but his mother placed him in studies of Latin and Greek, and he concentrated on botany and medicine to the age of 17, when his mother arranged for him to be married. At the age of 21, in 1866, he met Father Dominique Chaix and with him began to explore the Alps for plants. In 1770 he began to feel the need for gainful employment to support his growing family, and the following year he left the Hautes-Alpes to go to Grenoble to study surgery. He traveled the Dauphiné Alps, a mountain range in southeastern France, and botanized with Jean-Etienne Guettard, Barthelemy Faujas of Saint-Fonds, and Adolphe Murray. He returned in 1782 to Grenoble and became a doctor of medicine in 1788. He performed as medical officer of the military hospital until 1802. He was appointed to the National Institute of Sciences and Arts in 1796. He was also the creator of the botanical garden of Grenoble in 1782 and formed a friendship with Pierre Liottard. From 1805 he was appointed professor at the Faculty of Sciences of Strasbourg where he finished his career. His main work was the four-volume Histoire des plantes du Dauphiné published between 1786 and 1789, in which about 2,700 species (particularly alpine plants) are described, after over twenty years of observation in the Dauphiné region of France. His herbarium and botanical manuscripts are preserved at the Muséum d'histoire naturelle de Grenoble. Dominique Villars greatly contributed to the study of alpine flora in the 18th century, and his herbarium and observations, preserved in the museum of Grenoble, remain a reference for the specialists of today. He died in Strasbourg.

villo'sa/villos'um/villos'us: hairy, from villus, "hair," and the adjectival suffix -ōsus, "full of."

villosis'simum: very hairy.

vimina'le/vimina'lis: with long slender shoots, from the Latin, vimen, a long flexible shoot or osier.

vimin'ea/vimin'eum: with long slender shoots suitable for wicker or basketwork, of osiers, osier-like, with plant twigs. Osier is another word for willows.

Vin'ca: from the Latin name Vinca pervinca from vincio or vincire, "to bind," referring to its long creeping vines which were used to prepare garlands. The genus Vinca was published by Carl Linnaeus in 1753.

vin'culans: possibly from the Latin root vinculum, "a bond, a cord." David Hollombe sent me the following which confirms this: "The specific epithet vinculans means linking or bonding, in reference to the sharing of some characters of L. vinculans with L. douglasii R.Br. and L. bakeri J.T. Howell."

vinea'le: pertaining to vines, growing in vineyards.

vinea'tus: the -atus suffix is usually a Latin adjectival suffix added to noun stems indicating possession or likeness, and the noun stem in this case is probably vinum, "wine," so this could mean possessing some characteristic like wine, perhaps a color. The Jepson Manual's use of the common name "Vine Hill Ceanothus" for Ceanothus foliosus var. vineatus is a strong indication that that is the derivation of this name, and perhaps where the type specimen was found. Vine Hill is in Sonoma County.

vin'eum: from the Latin vinum, "wine," and vineus, "made of or belonging to wine, sometimes used in the sense of being wine-colored."

vinif'era: wine-bearing.

Vio'la: a classical Latin name for various sweet-scented flowers such as violets, stocks and wallflowers, from viola "the violet, a violet color," a cognate with Greek ion (see iodine), probably from a pre-Indo-European substrate Mediterranean language. The color sense (late 14c.) developed from the flower. There may also be some etymological connection to music, as in the viola or the violin. although violin comes from the Italian violino, a diminutive form of viola, which owes its roots to the Medieval Latin vitula, “stringed instrument.” This latin word is believed to stem from Vitula, Roman goddess of joy, or from the related Latin verb vitulari, “to exult, be joyful.” Vitula also was a word meaning purple or violet color.The genus Viola was published by Carl Linnaeus in 1753.

viola'ceum: violet-colored, from the Latin viola, “violet flower,” and ‎ -āceus, suffix meaning "of or pertaining to."

violas'cens: becoming violet-colored,

vires'cens: greenish, becoming green, from the Latin verb viresco meaning “turning green, becoming green.”

vi'rens: green.

vir'ga: from the Latin virga, "a twig or sprout."

virga'ta/virga'tum/virga'tus: wand-like, twiggy in growth, referring to the tall, bare stems, medieval Latin virgata, from virga, a land measure, from Latin, rod. The Merriam-Webster dictionary says this about its word of the day, virga: "Virga is from the Latin word virga, which means primarily 'branch' or 'rod,' but can also refer to a streak in the sky suggesting rain. Our featured word, which dates to the mid-20th century, is only the latest in a series of words from this root. 'Verge' (which originally referred to a rod or staff carried as an emblem of authority or a symbol of office) dates to the 15th century. The rare noun 'virgate,' which refers to an old English unit of land area, came from 'virga' by way of the Medieval Latin virgata (also a unit of land area) in the late 17th century. The more common adjective 'virgate,' meaning 'shaped like a rod or wand' arrived in the early 19th by way of Latin virgatus, meaning 'made of twigs.' " The words 'branch' or 'rod' can easily to correlated to 'wand.'

virginen'sis:  Professor Curtis Clark of the Biological Sciences Department at Cal State Polytechnic University, an authority on Encelia, informs me that 'virginensis' is "named after the Virgin River, that runs from southwestern Utah into Nevada, where it merges with the Colorado at Lake Mead. E. virginensis, aka Virgin River brittlebush, is found along the river from the lower elevations of Zion National Park all the way to Lake Mead." There is also in California a borage species named Oreocarya virginensis commonly called Virgin River cryptantha.

virginia'na: see virginica below.

virgin'ica/virgin'icum/virgin'icus: from or referring to Virginia.

vir'ide/vir'idis: green, from Latin viridis, "green."

virides'cens: becoming green.

viridiflor'um: with green flowers, from Latin viridis, "green," and florum, "flower."

viridifo'lium: with green leaves.

viridis'sima: very green.

virid'ula: somewhat green.

viro'sa: muddy, from virosus, "muddy, covered with slime."

vis'cida: viscid, describing the small, sticky globules of brown, viscid liquid on the ends of the hairs on the stem.

viscidehir'ta: from a combination of the roots viscos, "sticky," and hirta, "rough, hairy."

viscidiflor'us: with sticky flowers.

viscid'ula/viscid'ulus: from the Latin roots visco or viscare, "to make sticky," and the adjectival suffix -ulus used to indicate "small or little," thus meaning "minutely viscid."

vis'cidus: viscid.

visco'sa/visco'sus: viscid, from the Latin viscum, birdlime obtained from mistletoe berries. Stearn says "sticky, clammy."

viscosis'simum: very sticky.

Vis'cum: Latin name for the mistletoe. The genus Viscum was published by Carl Linnaeus in 1753.

visna'ga: "toothpick," the likes of which were apparently fashioned from the spines of barrel cactuses by the people of Spanish America, giving rise to the name Bisnaga.

vita'cea: vine-like, from vitis, "vine."

Vi'tex: a Latin name used by Pliny for the chaste-tree, Vitex agnus-castus, or a similar shrub, probably from the Latin vieo, "to plait, tie up or twine," according to Umberto Quattrocchi. The genus Vitex was published by Carl Linnaeus in 1753.

vitifo'lium: with leaves like those of genus Vitis.

Vi'tis: the Latin name for the grapevine, from some Proto-Indo-European language meaning “that which twines or bends, branch, switch.” The genus Vitis was published by Carl Linnaeus in 1753.

vitta'ta/vitta'tus: striped lengthwise, from the Latin vitta, "a band."

vi'vida/vi'vidus: from the Latin vividus, meaning "lively, having the appearance of vigorous life or freshness," and when applied to colors meaning "producing a strong, sharp or intense impression on the senses."

vivid'ior: from vividus, "lively, vigorous," and the suffix -ior which is commonly used to indicate a greater extent of whatever adjectival characteristic it is attached to, e.g. brevior, "shorter," gracilior, "more slender," thus this would be "more lively, more vigorous."

vivip'ara: viviparous, that is, bearing plantlets or bulblets on the leaves or in the inflorescence of the parent plant, from vivus, "alive" and -parus, "bearing," or pariō, “to give birth, produce, bring forth.”

vlasso'vii: peobably named for Yakov Petrovich Vlassov (1880-?), a Russian or Ukranian biologist and parasitologist who may have collected the plant near Ashkhabad in Turkmenistan. He was the co-author with V.I. Sytshevskaja of "The spiders of the Neighbourhood of Ashkhabad" (1937). What makes it difficult to research names in Russian is of course the cyrillic alphabet and the habit of referring to Russians only by their initials rather than first and middle names. California the moss species with this epithet is Microbryum vlassovii, commonly called nugget moss.

Vleck'ia: named for Jacob van Vleck (1751-1831). The following is quoted from an article by B.W.C. Roberts in The Dictionary of North Carolina Biography: "Jacob Van Vleck, Moravian bishop, was born in New York City, the third oldest of seven children. His father, Henricus (Henry) Van Vleck, was a merchant and realtor in New York City; his mother, Jannetje Cargyle Van Vleck, was from Isle, Scotland. Van Vleck obtained his early education at Nazareth, Pa, and attended the theological seminary at Barby, Saxony, between 1771 and 1779. At this time he sought experience at the Single Brothers House in Christiansbrunn, Pa. His abilities were recognized, and by 1781 he was appointed chaplain and superintendent of the Brothers House at Bethlehem, Pa. Here he became secretary of the General Board. Perhaps in appreciation for the Moravians allowing the Brothers House to be used as a hospital on two occasions during the American Revolution, George Washington in 1782 visited Bethlehem, where he was entertained by sacred music, vocal and instrumental. Jacob Van Vleck played the organ in the chapel while cake and wine were served. Van Vleck had a fondness for music and was a pianist, organist, and violinist, as well as a composer. The music he wrote was in the classical tradition. His father's admiration for him was evidenced in his will in 1784; it stated, 'And unto my dear Son, Jacob, I give my Silver pocket watch which I leave him in Remembrance of His Father who ever had singular joy in his said son's Spiritual prosperity.' In 1789, while a delegate to the synod in Herrnhut, Van Vleck married Ann Elizabeth Staehle (Lisetta Stackly), from Bern, Switzerland, and of Moravian parentage, who was teaching in Herrnhut. They had two children, William Henry and Charles Anthony. Both sons entered the ministry, and Charles Anthony served as bishop in Salem. In 1881 Jacob's grandson, Henry Jacob Van Vleck, was also consecrated a bishop. On returning to America Van Vleck became principal of the Young Ladies' Seminary, in Bethlehem, which had approximately 80 students enrolled. By 1797 the boarding school had 365 students, including the niece of George Washington and the children of other prominent families. New applications were not even considered. Van Vleck remained in his post until 1800. Two years later he was appointed principal of the boys' school, Nazareth Hall. He had become the head pastor at Bethlehem in 1799. In 1811 he was transferred to Lititz, Pa., and in 1812 he was sent to Salem, N.C. Arriving in Salem on 14 November, he and his wife resided at the Gemein Haus. One of three administrators for the Southern Province in the Provincial Helpers Conference (later known as the Provincial Elders Conference), Van Vleck became chairman of this group by 16 November. Also beginning in 1812 he served as pastor of the Salem congregation, preaching in German and English and leading song services (singstunden ). Van Vleck traveled to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, where on 2 May 1815 he was consecrated bishop, thus becoming the first American-born Moravian bishop. In 1816 he was listed as a member of the North Carolina Bible Society, a statewide religious organization. In 1822 his wife was elected by the fifty-six charter members as president of the Female Missionary Society. Later that year Van Vleck asked to be relieved of his duties at Salem, and after ten years' residence there he and his wife returned to Bethlehem. She died on 24 Nov. 1829. Jacob Van Vleck died at age eighty and was buried in the married men's section of the Moravian cemetery in Bethlehem." Aside from the description quoted above, the Right Reverend Jacob Van Vleck apparently had an interest in botany, and collected some plants. The genus Vleckia was published in 1836 by Constantine Samuel Rafinesque who was famous for not explaining the names he published.

vollmer'i: named for Albert Michael Vollmer (1896-1977). The following is from Cantelow and Cantelow "Biographical Notes on Persons in whose Honor Alice Eastwood Named Native Plants," (Leaflets of Western Botany 8 (5): 83-101): "Physician, collector and grower of native lilies; born in San Diego, California, 14 May 1896; now residing in San Francisco, Calif. Quoting from Alice Eastwood: 'not only has he cultivated most of the lilies of California in his garden, but he has probably seen more growing in their native habitats than anyone.' Dr. Vollmer has also collected in Baja California with Dr. I. L. Wiggins of Stanford University." Not only did he collect the type of Lilium vollmeri (now Lilium pardalinum ssp. volmeri) with Ira Wiggins, but also the types of Lilium wigginsii (now Lilium pardalinum ssp. wigginsii) and L. pitkinense (now Lilium pardalinum ssp. pitkinense) with Lawrence Beane. An article in Madroño by Ira Wiggins referred to him as "a medical doctor who loved lilies" and added that "Dr. Vollmer also collected herbarium specimens of most California lilies that he had originally collected for propagation, and sent much material to the California Academy of Sciences, the University of California, Stanford University, and to the US National Herbarium in Washington, DC. He collected and cultivated representatives of such genera as Calochortus and Fritillaria and of several species within the Amaryllidaceae. Dr. Vollmer published several papers in the Lily Yearbook and in garden journals. In these papers he contributed substantially to knowledge about geographical distribution, soil requirements, and flowering periods of our native lilies (Vollmer, 1954, 1956, 1959). The 1956 paper was presented in person, along with colored moving pictures of many of California's lilies, before the Royal Horticultural Society in London. It seems appropriate that recognition should be given to the excellent field work carried on by Dr. Vollmer, to the support he gave so generously to professional botanists, and for his devotion to saving the native stands of lilies in our state. I wish that such recognition might have been provided before [his] death in the spring of 1977, a few weeks before his 82nd birthday. He was a staunch friend who supported my field operations through a decade, and took me to several out-of-the-way lily localities in California." (Madroño, Vol. 28, No. 3, 7/81)

volu'bile/volu'bilis: twining, from the Latin word volubilis, meaning "turning, spinning, or winding." Dichelostemma volubile is commonly called twining snake lily.

Volutar'ia: from Latin voluta, "having a spiral scroll or twist," for the spirally-coiled corolla lobes of the original species. The genus Volutaria was published by Alexandre Henri Gabriel de Cassini in 1826.

vortried'ei: named for William Edward Vortriede (Vordtriede) (1861-1940). The following is quoted from G.W. Reed's 1923 History of Sacramento County: "Throughout a period of residence in California dating from 1887, William Vortriede has filled a. number of positions of trust and responsibility in his special line of work, that of landscape gardener. Since 1911 he has held the position of state gardener and at the same time is advising gardeners for all the state institutions. In the laying out of public and high school grounds his advice and cooperation is sought and readily given without any thought of compensation. William Vortriede was born in Germany, October 24, 1861, a son of Edward and Paulina (Berger) Vortriede, both natives of Germany, now deceased. Mr. Vortriede received his education in the schools of Germany and at an early age decided to take up gardening as a trade. He remained at home with his parents until he was twenty years old, and then came to the United States and went direct to Toledo, Ohio, where he worked for his uncle for four years; then he came west and was employed at Coronado Beach from the beginning of laying out the grounds, for four years, working at his trade during that period. He then removed to Stockton, where he was employed at the state hospital for thirteen years. He was placed in charge of the grounds of the public schools of Stockton, and for four years was landscape gardener for George West & Sons; then for two years he was with Dr. Samuel Langdon in orchard work at Stockton. In 1911 he was made state gardener at the capitol grounds in Sacramento, where he has given entire satisfaction. The marriage of Mr. Vortriede united him with Miss Christina Jergensen, and they are the parents of two children, Paulina and Edward. At seventeen years of age, Edward Vortriede volunteered for service in the U. S. Navy, and he served through the World War, and is now in the Sacramento Transportation Company service. In politics Mr. Vortriede is a Republican. His hobby is the study and cultivation of plants and flowers."

vreeland'ii: named for Dr. Frederick King Vreeland (1874-1964), American mechanical and electrical engineer, inventor and manufacturer, born in Bergen, New Jersey. He graduated from Stevens Institute in 1895 and was awarded an MA in 1909 from Columbia University. He was involved with the Crocker-Wheeler Electric Co. from 1896 to 1900 and became one of the foremost innovators of radio devices. He organized and was president of the Vreeland Apparatus Co. from 1905 until his death. He is the holder of at least 10 patents, and his inventions included oscillators, amplifiers, spectroscopes, and multiplexors. He was also interested in botany and was a plant collector and explorer and a co-collector of Per Axel Rydberg. He was married and had four children, and died at San Rafael, California. Mount Vreeland in British Columbia was named for him. Vreeland was a common name according to the Bergen County Genealogical Society including twelve Fredericks.

vriesea'na: named for Hugo Marie de Vries (1848-1935), s Dutch botanist and geneticist known primarily for pro-

posing the concept of genes, rediscovering the laws of heredity in the 1890s while apparently unaware of Gregor Mendel's work, for introducing the term "mutation," and for developing a mutation theory of evolution. He was born in Haarlem, Netherlands. His father was a lawyer and deacon in the Mennonite congregation in Haarlem and later Prime Minister of the Netherlands from 1872 until 1874, and his maternal grandfather was a professor in archaeology at Leiden University, so he grew up in an educated household. In 1862 his father moved the family to the Hague. Hugo

attended gymnasium in Haarlem and The Hague, and showed a great deal of interest in botany, even putting together herbariums for which he won prizes. He enrolled at Leiden University in 1866 with the intention of majoring in botany, and graduated in 1870. Next he took classes in chemistry and physics at Heidelberg University where he worked in the laboratory of the German biologist and botanist Wilhelm Hofmeister. Later during that school year he became part of the laboratory of the esteemed Julius Sachs in Würzburg to study plant growth, and from 1871 until 1875 he taught botany, zoology, and geology at schools in Amsterdam, returning to the lab in Heidelberg to continue his research during each vacation period. Wikipedia fills in further information about the next part of his career: “In 1875, the Prussian Ministry of Agriculture offered De Vries a position as professor at the still to be constructed Landwirtschaftliche Hochschule ("Royal Agricultural College") in Berlin. In anticipation, he moved back to Würzburg, where he studied agricultural crops and collaborated with Sachs. By 1877, Berlin's College was still only a plan, and he briefly took up a position teaching at the University of Halle-Wittenberg. The same year he was offered a position as lecturer in plant physiology at the newly founded University of Amsterdam. He was made adjunct professor in 1878 and full professor on his birthday in 1881, partly to keep him from moving to the Berlin College, which finally opened that year. De Vries was also professor and director of Amsterdam's Botanical Institute and Garden from 1885 to 1918.” His two major works were Intracellular Pangenesis (1889) defining the essential character of the gene, and The Mutation Theory (1900–1903). In 1878 he became a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, in 1905 he was elected Foreign Member of the Royal Society, and in 1910 he was elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. He was awarded the Darwin Medal in 1906 and the Linnean Medal in 1929, retiring from the University of Amsterdam in 1918. There he had large experimental gardens and he continued his studies with new forms until his death in 1935.

vulca'nica: growing on a volcano.

vulga're/vulgar'is: common, ordinary, from Latin vulgaris, volgaris, "of or pertaining to the common people, common, vulgar, low, mean," from vulgus, volgus "the common people, multitude, crowd, throng."

vulga'ta/vulga'tum: common.

Vul'pia: named for German chemist/physicist, pharmacist and amateur botanist of Pforzheim Johann Samuel Vulpius (1760-1846) who investigated the flora of Baden. The genus Vulpia was published by Carl Christian Gmelin in 1805 and is commonly called annual fescue.

vulpinoid'ea: relating to or resembling foxes, from vulpes, vulpis, "fox." The species Carex vulpinoidea is commonly called fox sedge.

vulvar'ia: from the Latin vulvarius, "of foul smell, evil odor."