Lab'lab: a taxonomic genus within the family Fabaceae, the hyacinth bean (Dolichos lablab), possibly from an Arabic or Hindu root.

labrador'ica: of or from Labrador.

labrus'ca: a wild vine.

la'cera: torn or cut into fringe-like segments, lacerated.

Lachnan'thes: from the Greek lachne, "wool," and anthos, "flower," alluding to woolly flowers. The genus Lachnanthes is commonly called redroot and was published by Stephen Elliott in 1816.

Lachnocaul'on: from Greek lachnos, "wool, down," and chaulos, "stem," in reference to the long, soft, upwardly pointed hairs on scapes of the type specimen. The genus is common called bog-buttons and was published by Karl Sigismund Kunth in 1841.

lacinia'ta/lacinia'tum/lacinia'tus: torn or deeply cut, slashed into narrow divisions, irregularly divided, referring to the fringed petals, from the Latin lacinia, “flap or edge of a garment,” and‎ -ate.

Lactu'ca: Latin for "milk," referring to the milky sap in stem, and a root word for lactic acid. The genus Lactuca is called lettuce and was published by Carl Linnaeus in 1753.

lacunos'a: with holes, gaps or pits, uncertain as to what this refers to in the species Ipomoea lacunosa.

lacus'tre/lacus'tris: of or pertaining to lakes.

laetiflor'us: abundantly flowered with flowers of a gay or joyful appearance.

lae've/lae'vis: smooth, free from hairs or roughness, from Latin laevis, "smooth."

laevicaul'e: smooth-stemmed.

laeviga'ta/laeviga'tum/laeviga'tus: smooth or slippery, lustrous or shining. polished, not rough, from Latin laevis, "smooth."

laevivagina'ta: smooth-sheathed, from Latin laevis, "smooth," and vaginata, "sheathed or having a sheath.'

Lagenar'ia: bottle-gourd, from Latin lagena, "bottle or flask," and Greek lagenos, "a flask," and -ar'ia, a suffix meaning "pertaining to, a thing like, or connected to something," alluding to the shape and use of the fruit. The genus Lagenaria was published in 1825 by Nicolas Charles Seringe.

Lagerstroe'mia: named for Magnus Lagerström (1691-1759), Swedish author, merchant, patron, and translator, Director

		of the Swedish East India Company, and correspondent of Linnaeus. He was born in Stettin, West Pomerania, Poland, to the Swedish-Pomeranian chancellor Magnus Gabriel Laurin von Lagerström and Helena Engelcrona. He made an educational trip to various German states and Denmark. Mainly he seems to have devoted himself to language studies. Apart from Latin, he spoke and wrote in time English, French, Dutch and German and was not unversed in Polish, Spanish or Italian. After he studied in Rostock, Greifswald, Wittenberg and Jena, he became secretary to the Governor-general in Stettin

in 1708, moving from Stettin to Stralsund with the Swedish administration after that city was captured in 1713, and lost his post. He worked as a court councilor until 1720 when peace was restored. He then moved to Stockholm, For a time he worked as a secretary to the president of a commercial college and later as  amanuensis (literary assistant) to the national historiographer J. Wilde, mainly as a proofreader at Wilde's printing house, and as a compiler and translator. He compiled books on legal practice, veterinary medicine and arithmetic, and translated comedies and other works such as Bunyan’s Pilgrims Progress. His translation of the linguist J. König's English grammar intended for German speakers was the first Swedish textbook in the language. In 1731 he went to Gothenburg and for the first few years was secretary, correspondent, bookkeeper and treasurer of the newly formed Swedish East India Company. He was married in 1733 to Klara Olbers, daughter of a respected merchant family in Gothenburg. He took part in the Company's East India voyage to China in 1743-45. From this trip he brought back plants unknown in Europe for the botanist Carl von Linné, who named one of them Lagerstroemia indica after him. In 1746 he became the Director. He placed a large share in the company, established a tobacco factory in partnership with his brother-in-law and acquired land properties in the surroundings of Gothenburg. On the estates, he experimented in the style of the time with horticulture, arable farming and meadow management. When he was honored with the title of commercial councilor, it was justified by his contributions to the national economy. His interest in agriculture had awakened in him a desire to study natural history and subsequently a desire to know something about the natural resources of the countries visited by the company's ships. In the 1740s, he persuaded members of the ship's crews to bring home ethnographic, animals, plants and stones from India and China. He established procedures for captains and helmsmen would record cartographic, meteorological and magnetic findings in their journals, and priests and field shearers would collect natural materials and keep notes about their experiences and observations. Among the remarkable things brought home were mammals, birds, fish, insects, worms and corals, plants, seeds, machine models and tools. He had a well-stocked library, which was dominated by history and natural science, but also contained such a rarity as the Shakespeare folio from 1623. In the epitaph for Lagerström, it can be read that his innate cheerfulness followed him into death and that he was a good Christian without hypocrisy. His letters testify to his cheerfulness even though he often complains that his frail health made him sluggish, lazy and pigeon-holed Linnaeus named after him the genus Lagerstroemia within the torch rose family. He corresponded often with Carl Linnaeus, sending him numerous specimens, between 1748 and 1757. He had been a powerful promoter of natural history in Sweden, and worked assiduouslyworked to get naturalists attached to the East India Company’s voyages. Magnus von Lagerström died childless in Gothenburg in 1759, so his Pomeranian fiefs passed to the family members who remained in Pomerania.

laguro'ides: resembling genus Lagurus.

Lam'ium: the ancient Latin name for the mints. The genus Lamium was published by Carl Linnaeus in 1753 and is called dead-nettle or henbit.

lana'tus: covered with long, woolly hair.

lancastrien'sis: Gledhill says "from Lancashire, Lancastrian," and there is a species Sorbus lancastriensis which is called the Lancashire whitebeam, but in the case of Cyperus lancastriensis which is the taxon that is in the Flora of Virginia, I think it refers to Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. The Harvard University Herbaria has a voucher specimen of Cyperus lancastriensis that was collected by T.C. Porter in Lancaster County, PA.

lanceola'ta/lanceola'tum/lanceola'tus: lance-like, referring to the shape of the leaves.

lancifo'lia/lancifo'lium: with sharply pointed leaves.

Landolt'ia: named for Elias Landolt (1926-2013) of the Swiss Geobotanical Institute at Zurich and author of A Monograph

of the Lemnaceae and the two-volume Biosystematic investigations in the family of duckweeds (Lemnaceae). "Dr. Landolt is the world’s recognized expert in all aspects of the biology of the Lemnaceae, and is Professor Emeritus in the Geobotanical Department of Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule, Zürich. He has authored dozens of journal articles and four definitive monographs on Lemnaceae biology that represent a compilation of knowledge of this plant family. During his 35 year tenure at ETH in Zurich, Dr. Landolt traveled the world amassing an extensive living collection of more

than 900 strains of Lemnaceae, including representatives of all genera and species." (from a website of Biolex Therapeutics) He was born and grew up in Zurich. His father was a lawyer and politician and later the mayor of Zurich. From 1945 to 1949 he studied the natural sciences at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and received a doctoral degree in 1953. For the next two years he was in California doing research at the Carnegie Institution for Science, Department of Plant Biology, Stanford, and then at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. When he returned to Zurich he became an assistant and then an associate professor and finally a full professor at the Geobotanical Institute where he taught and researched until his retirement. From 1966 to 1993 he served as Director of the Institute. He also made many exploratory trips to tropical and subtropical countries to collect both living duckweeds and herbarium specimens which constitutes the most significant collection of Lemnaceae anywhere in the world. The genus Landoltia was named in his honor in 1999 by Donald Les and Daniel Crawford and is called duckmeat or water-flaxseed.

lan'guida: dull, weak, drooping. Other meanings of the Latin languida or languidus include "faint, languid, sluggish, slow, ill, sick, unwell, and listless." The species Poa languida has been called drooping or weak bluegrass.

lano'sa/lano'sum: woolly.

lantano'ides: resembling genus Lantana.

lanugino'sa: woolly or downy.

lapathifo'lia: with leaves like Lapathum.

laphamii: named for Increase Allen Lapham (1811-1875), scientist, naturalist, author, and educator. He is considered

the ‘Father’ of the U. S. Weather Bureau.. He was born in Palmyra, New York, and his family moved to Pennsylvania, back to New York, to Ohio, to Louisville, Kentucky, and then back to Ohio. In 1836 Lapham moved to Wisconsin and before the end of the year he had published a Catalogue of Plants and Shells, Found in the vicinity of Milwaukee, on the West Side of Lake Michigan, perhaps the first scientific work published west of the Great Lakes. He was educated as a civil engineer and served on several canal projects, including the canal around the Falls of the Ohio at Louisville.Wikipedia says:

“He founded the Wisconsin Natural History Association, which eventually became the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters, of which he also was a charter member. Many of his works and early maps were used for various civil projects such as canal and railroad development. In 1844 Lapham published the first substantial book on the geography of the Wisconsin Territory. His first map of Wisconsin was made in 1846. He published many more papers and books through his life, particularly on geology, archaelogy and history, and flora and fauna of Wisconsin, including publication by the Smithsonian Institution.” In 1850, he discovered the Panther Intaglio Effigy Mound, which is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Lapham was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society in 1853.” He lobbied Congress and the Smithsonian Institution to create an agency to forecast storms on the Great Lakes and both coasts. He was instrumental in establishing the Milwaukee public high school program, was one of the founders of Milwaukee Female Seminary (1848), and was president of The State Historical Society (1862-1871). He was chief geologist for Wisconsin (1873-1875), and was a founder and member of many early educational, civic, and scientific organizations, corresponding regularly with leading scientists throughout the world. His natural history collection, including fossils, minerals, shells, meteorites, Indian relics, and a large herbarium, was acquired by the legislature in 1876 for the University of Wisconsin. He died of a heart attack in Oconomewoc, Wisconsin. He was also honored by the genus name Laphamia which was published by Asa Gray.

Lapor’tea: named for François-Louis Nompar de Caumont Laporte, comte de Castelnau (1810-1880), often referred

to as Francois de Castelnau), French explorer, naturalist, and diplomat. He was born in London in 1810, the illegitimate child of Louise-Joséphine de Caumont, who emigrated to Great Britain during the French Revolution, and the Prince Regent, later George IV. JSTOR provides the following information: “After studies in natural sciences in Paris, he led an expedition to North America (1837-1841) and, as a result of its success, was given command of a scientific expedition (with political undertones) to South America, for the duc d'Orléans and the Musée national d'Histoire naturelle. The expedition was to

explore the Amazon basin and make an assessment of its potential for economic development, determine the border with La Plata, and study the course of the Amazon and its tributaries with the aim of securing uninterrupted navigation from Trinidad to Buenos Aires. Arriving in Rio de Janeiro in April 1843, the expedition party remained there until October, and spent the rest of the year on excursions in the north and northwest of the state toward Minas Gerais. For the first months of 1844, they explored Minas Gerais to Goyaz, where they sojourned until May, before exploring the Araguay, the Tocatins, and the deserts of the Chavantes. After a second sojourn at Goyaz, they headed across Matto Grosso for Cuyaba, which became the base for their next excursions. After searching for the sources of the Paraguay and Tapajoz Rivers, they travelled as far as Fuerto Olimpo, but were escorted back to Albuquerque by a Paraguayan detachment. Once released, they explored the course of the Paraguay and the Pantanal Wetland as far as Villa Maria, at which point the botanist Hugh Algernon Weddell left the expedition to travel on his own. The remaining party headed towards Bolivia and the Madeira Basin but were denied access beyond Villa Bella because of frontier skirmishes between Bolivia and Brazil. Instead they retraced the southern route of Alcide d'Orbigny to La Paz, and onward to Lima, departing for Cuzco in May, 1846 and spending the summer at their base in Echarate, on the Upper Urubamba, with visits to Cerro de Pasco, La Oroya, Junin, and Ayachuchu. From there, the mining engineer on the expedition, the vicomte Eugène d'Osery, travelled to Lima to dispatch their papers and collections before the return river journeys. But on the way back, his guides murdered him; only his watch fob and notebook would later be found. Castelnau and the zoologist Emile Deville reached Sarayuca in December 1846 and, after resting there, continued down the Ucayli and Maranon Rivers, arriving finally in Belém in April 1847. Castelnau went on an inspection of the French colonies in the Caribbean, to report on the comparative effects on the quality of work of abolishing or maintaining slavery on plantations and in other areas of colonial exploitation. His arrival in Paris in August 1847 marked the end a major cartographic and geographic undertaking, having covered some 16,000 kilometres of the South American continent. The collection of hundreds of zoological specimens and 5,000-6,000 plant specimens resulted in the discovery of many new species. Publication of his account of expedition was delayed by illness and political events, but was finally achieved between 1851 and 1858, and included two volumes on botany. By the time the last volume appeared, Castelnau had already served as French consul in Bahia, and was now in Thailand. In 1864, he was posted to Melbourne, where he died in 1880.” He served as French consul both in Siam and in Melbourne, Australia. In 1856-57, he visited the Cape of Good Hope, travelling as far east as Algoa Bay, and subsequently wrote a treatise on South African fish (1861). The genus Laportea was published by Charles Gaudichaud-Beaupré in 1830. 

Lapsa'na: Wikipedia says "The scientific name comes from lapsane, an edible herb described by Marcus Terentius Varro of ancient Rome." And Flora of North America says from "Greek lapsanae, a vegetable mentioned by Dioscorides," who apparently used this name for wild mustard or charlock. The genus Lapsana was published by Carl Linnaeus in 1753 and is called nipplewort.

lasiocar'pa: having woolly seed heads or fruits.

lateriflor'a/lateriflor'um: with a one-sided inflorescence.

lath'yris: an old Greek name for a kind of spurge.

lathyro'ides: resembling genus Lathyrus.

Lath'yrus: from the Greek lathyros, an ancient name for the chickling pea (Lathyrus sativus), and according to Gledhill, a name used by Theophrastus. The genus Lathyrus was published by Carl Linnaeus in 1753 and is called wild pea, sweet pea or vetchling.

la'ti-: broad, wide, from latus, the side, flank.

lat'idens: broad-toothed, from Latin latus, “wide,” and‎ dens, “tooth, tusk.”

latifo'lia/latifo'lium/latifo'lius: having wide leaves, from Latin latus, "wide, broad."

latiglu'mis: having wide or broad glumes.

latisqua'ma: broad-scaled, referring to the phyllaries.

latissimifo'lia: latissimus means very wide, so this name presumably means 'with very wide leaves.'

laurifo'lia: with leaves like Laurel.

la'xa/la'xum: growing loosely, slack, free.

laxicaul'is: loose-stemmed, not having rigid stems.

laxicul'mis: from laxi, "open, loose," and culmus, a stalk or stem of grass, hay or straw.

laxiflor'a/laxiflor'um: with flowers in loose clusters, loose-flowered.

leavenworth'ii: named for Dr. Melines Conklin (or Conkling) Leavenworth (1796-1862), an American physician, amateur botanist, plant collector and pharmacist. He was born in Waterbury, Connecticut, and graduated in 1817 from Yale Medical College. At the time of his graduation from Yale, he was considered one of the rising stars of the botanical firmament. He was the author of a number of botanical papers, and after graduating from Yale he is said to have been placed in charge of the Botanical Garden attached to the Medical College at New Haven. Having a passion for the study of botany, he was selected by the Faculty to make a tour south to obtain specimens, and develop the rich and little known floral and herbal treasures of that region. He spent several years collecting in several southern states, mainly Alabama, and practiced medicine there. He had settled in Catawba, but his health suffering, he moved to Augusta, Georgia, and became a druggist, remaining there more or less until he moved back to Waterbury, Connecticut in 1831.  During the winter of 1824-1825 he attended lectures at the Medical College of New York. In 1831 he applied for a commission as Assistant Surgeon, United States Army, and having been accepted he spent nine years at a number of frontier posts. In 1834 he was with his uncle, Gen. Henry Leavenworth, whose name is perpetuated in the town of Leavenworth, Kansas, on an expedition against the hostile Pawnees and Comanches, and who died that same year possibly as the result of a fall some time previously. At some point Leavenworth met and collected somewhere along the Red River with the Prussian plant collector Heinrich Beyrich who spent some months in the United States in 1833 and 1834. During this time he apparently had a good deal of time for his botanical activities. In 1835 he was reassigned to Florida, and then in the following year to Louisiana where he began collecting actively and sent many specimens to John Torrey, including some that Torrey named Leavenworthia in his honor. During the summer of 1837 he made three forays into Texas, and his collections from there in 1837 and 1838 were important and significant ones, but his Texas explorations ended when he was ordered to Florida. He continued collecting there and many of his Florida collections were cited in the Flora of North America. He left the Army in 1840 retiring to his Waterbury home and little is known of the period between his retirement and his readmittance to the Army in 1860 prior to the outbreak of the Civil War. He was stationed in New Orleans and then elsewhere in Louisiana and that is where he died in 1862.  His work is of interest to modern students chiefly because of the material from the then inaccessible "West" and "Southwest", which he contributed to Torrey. An article in a website of Southern Methodist University by Rogers McVaugh entitled "The Travels and Botanical Collections of Dr. Melines Conkling Leavenworth" and from which most of the above information has been extracted concludes by saying “We who follow botanical paths today must pause a moment to salute such men as this Doctor Leavenworth, not only as in this case when they die as heroes, but for their hard and dangerous pursuits of their avocations in botany, on the frontiers of America. These travelers and surgeons and lieutenants, who must have loved the lives they lived, fed the genius of the Torreys and Grays who wrote the history and science of botany; without them and their devotion to botany we should have fared poorly before travel became the easy thing it is now.”

Lech'ea: named for Johan Leche (1704-1764), described in an article in the Canadian Journal of Forest Research (Vol. 51. No. 2, 2021) as “a medical doctor by trade - a zoologist and botanist by interest - but a climatologist at heart.” The following is essentially quoted from that article: He was born in Barkåkra, Sweden, and raised in a home with strong clerical traditions, so it was only natural that he would go to Lund University in 1724 to study theology. His first position after university, however, was as a private tutor in botany and natural history in Simonstorp in southwestern Sweden. New to the subjects, Leche became a self-taught natural historian and compiled a collection of birds and insects, including over 500 types of plant species, both wild and cultivated, which later resulted in Florula Simonstorpiana. After 4 years as a tutor, Leche abandoned his theological calling in 1733 and returned to Lund University to study medicine, during which time he also supervised the university’s natural specimens collections. Leche received the title of Doctor of Medicine in 1740. Thereafter, he worked as a provincial physician, a position he disliked and quickly relinquished. Nonetheless, inspired by Carl Linnaeus, Leche continued his studies of fauna until 1742, when he applied for the position of Professor of Medicine at Lund University. He did not receive the position, but this period was an important catalyst for Leche’s interest in measuring climatic parameters. To improve his chances of attaining the position as professor, Leche travelled to Stockholm, where he came in personal contact with Linnaeus. He also maintained correspondence with the astronomer Anders Celsius in Uppsala, who together with the mathematician Pehr Elvius at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences inspired Leche to conduct meteorological observations. In 1745, Leche served as the physician for the Swedish East India Company in Gothenburg. During this period, he continuously conducted meteorological observations and studied local flora and fauna. He sent his findings to Linnaeus, who was so impressed by Leche’s contribution that he later named both a genus of herbs and a species of insect (Phalaena lecheana, also known as Leche’s twist moth) after him. In 1746, Leche was elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. In February 1748, Leche was appointed as the Professor of Medicine at the Royal Academy in Turku, Finland. He arrived in Turku in September, and by October, he was conducting meteorological observations. He would continue his observations until his death in 1764. According to his friend Pehr Kalm, the last tasks Leche performed were writing down the daily weather observations that he made in his garden. Leche’s scientific publications (17 in total) reveal a scrupulous and methodological interdisciplinary scientist with a strict sense of reasoning and modern approach to science. Leche refrained from outlandish speculations and meticulously collected observational data before presenting his results.” He also conducted much research into dendrochronology and conducted several dendrochronological and field experiments described only in his unpublished manuscript filed in the National Archives in Sweden, experiments which made important contributions to the field. He studied the flora of Scania and amassed a small herbarium that was purchased by Joseph Banks, bequeathed to his assistant Robert Brown in 1820 and acquired by BM in 1827. He had well-developed language skills, being fluent or at least comfortable in Latin, Hebrew, Greek, English, French, German and Finnish in addition to his own tongue. He developed a system of tree ring dating that was 160 years before the work of the astronomer Andrew Ellicott Douglass, who is often called the father of that science. He prepared Flora Fennica, which describes the plants of Finland, but it remained a manuscript and was destroyed in the fire of Turku in 1827. He was married and had eight children, two of whom died early. In early June 1764, Leche suffered a fit of unconsciousness and lost his memory except for meteorology, and died a couple of weeks later. The genus Lechea was published by Carl Linnaeus in 1753 and is called pinweed.

Leer'sia: named for Johann Georg Daniel Leers (1727-1774), German lichenologist, mycologist, pharmacist, university teacher and author. He was born in Wunsiedel in the Fichtel Mountains, the third of six children of a merchant. Due to the financial impecunity of his family, he began training as a pharmacist at the age of 13 which suited his interest in natural sciences. All that is known about the rest of his youth is that after completing his training as a pharmacist, he was employed in Nuremberg and several other cities and finally ended up in Strasbourg. There he was able to continue his education as a guest auditor at the university in anatomy and medicine, but was not an enrolled student there. From 1749 the Herborn School pharmacy belonged to the Dillenburg town pharmacist Johann Jacob Meder, and it was managed by pharmacist Christoph Andreas Magerstaedt. After Magerstaedt’s death, Johann Daniel Leers took over the management of the school pharmacy in 1755. In that same year he married the widow of the pharmacist, and bought the pharmacy from his father-in-law. In addition to the manufacture and sale of medicines, from which he could make a profit, the school pharmacist also had the task of providing the medical professors with materials for lectures free of charge, and also demonstrating chemical and physical processes to the students free of charge. His duties included supervising a local botanical gardens. From the beginning of his work in Herborn in 1755, Johann Daniel Leers dealt intensively with botany and explored the immediate vicinity of Herborn on numerous excursions. Due to the fact that he could not afford a pharmacy assistant, only an apprentice, he could never stray from the pharmacy on weekdays, but had to be available at all times. He also did not visit Dillenburg, which is only a few kilometers up the river. The extent to which he knew of Catharina Helena Dörrien (1717-1795), who lived there and did botanical work, must remain open. Neither mention each other in their nearly simultaneous floras, but both knew of some remarkable growth sites in the vicinity of Herborn and Dillenburg, such as the Beilstein, or the occurrence of Acorus calamus on the River Dill. He did however make contact with the Swiss polymath and botanist Albrecht von Haller. He dedicated himself throughout to the scientific research of Herborn's flora, and was the first to accurately describe the flora of his homeland and provide locations.  His description of the plants he found was arranged according to the Linnaean system, which was still disputed at the time. He depicted the plants in watercolours, drawings and engraved plates. The grasses were of particular interest to Leers. About ten plants were named after him as the first to describe or give their names. After many changes in plant nomenclature, only one plant still bears his name today, Leersia oryzoides.  In order to be able to add illustrations to his flora, Johann Daniel Leers painstakingly taught himself how to engrave copper, and a total of 16 copper plates with 104 illustrations of grasses, grasses and rushes are attached to the flora. Since the illustrations were highly valued at the time, they were also used in several other works and copied by other engravers for this purpose. From 1764 Johann Daniel Leers was repeatedly seriously ill, so that as early as 1770 and again in 1772 his early death was feared. However, he was always able to recover until, from September 1774, he was so weak that he could no longer get out of his sickbed. Johann Daniel Leers died on December 7, 1774, of pulmonary tuberculosis in Herborn. His main work was the Flora Herbornensis which was completed but not published until 1775 after his death. Another illustrated work on the cryptogams and algae planned by Johann Daniel Leers was never completed. Johann Daniel Leers' Flora Herbornensis was immediately used by other Hessian botanists after it was published. The herbarium compiled by Johann Daniel Leers is lost. Parts are said to have been taken to Moscow by Georg Franz Hoffmann in 1804, where they burned in September 1812 in the great fire during the Napoleonic occupation. Other parts are said to have been taken by the doctor Karl Friedrich Fuchs from Herborn when he was called to the Russian Kazan in 1807 and have not been found since. In Herborn, a botanical society called Friends of Flora Herbornensis is named after him. The genus Leersia was published by Olof Swartz in 1788 and is called cutgrass.

legrand'ii: named for Harry Elwood LeGrand, Jr. (1949- ), an American zoologist, biologist and ornithologist. He received a BS degree in Zoology in 1971 and an MS degree in Zoology with a minor degree in Botany from North Carolina State University, and then a PhD in Zoology in 1981 from Clemson University. From 1971 to 1972 he was a research assistant at North Carolina State University, from 1973 to 1974 a research assistant at Clemson and from 1975 to 1977 a teaching assistant at Clemson, and then from 1978 to 1980 a research assistant again at Clemson. He was made a post doc research assistant at Clemson and then was selected as a biologist on rearch projects at Cape May Bird Observatory and at  Gateway National Recreation Area, Sandy Hook, New Jersey. From 1985 to 1992 he was a consulting biologist and then a zoologist for the North Carolina Natural Heritage Program from 1984 until he retired in 2015. He was Regional Editor of American Birds from 1977 to 1991. He has conducted numerous inventories and studies of natural areas, rare plants and animals, breeding bird populations, and distribution of birds and butterfly populations and distribution in North Carolina.

leimantho'ides: resembling genus Leimanthum.

leiosper'ma: from Greek leios, "smooth," and sperma, "seed," thus smooth-seeded.

Lem'na: from the Greek limnos, "lake or swamp," referring to its aquatic habitat. The genus Lemna was published by Carl Linnaeus in 1753 and is called duckweed.

len'ta: tough but pliant.

lenta'go: pliant, lasting.

lenticular'is: lens-shaped or shaped like a lentil, having the form of a double-convex lens, from lenticula, which is the source of the English word 'lentil' and a diminutive of the Latin form lent-, lens, meaning "lentil," and also giving rise to the word 'lens.'

leonard''ii: named for American botanist Emery Clarence Leonard (1892-1968). He was born in Champaign, Illinois, and was educated at Wittenberg College, receiving a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1915. He then earned a Master’s degree from Ohio State College in 1916. He joined the Division of Plants at the United States National Museum in 1918, and was in the military service from 1918-1919. He collected local flora from 1918-1924, and then began to collect in Haiti during the 1920s, working with Ellsworth P. Killip, William Louis Abbott, and Genevieve Mannakee Leonard. He specialized in research on the family Acanthaceae, and  published on nearly 500 new species in that family. He was known partivcularly for his work on the flora of Haiti. The species named for this person is Scutellaria leonardii.

Leon'todon: from the Greek leon, "lion," and odous, "tooth," because of the toothed leaves. The genus Leontodon was published by Carl Linnaeus in 1753.

Leonur'us: from the Greek leon for "lion" and oura, "a tail," hence resembling a lion's tail. The genus Leonurus was published by Carl Linnaeus in 1753 and is called motherwort.

Lepid'ium: from the Greek lepidion, meaning "a little scale," in reference to the shape of the fruit pods. An alternative derivation is also given by a variety of sources, such as that found on Wikipedia which says "The genus name Lepidium is a Greek word meaning 'small scale', which is thought to be derived from a folk medicine usage of the plant to treat leprosy, which causes small scales on the skin." The genus Lepidium was published by Carl Linnaeus in 1753 and is called pepperweed, peppergrass and pepperwort.

lepido'ta: from lepis, "scale," and the suffix ota/otus indicating possession, thus having or possessing small scurfy scales.

lepori'na/lepori'num: from the root word lepus or leporis for "a hare, thus hare-like."

lepta'lea: fine, slender.

lep'to-: narrow, slender, from the Greek leptos, "slender, thin, small, weak."

leptocar'pa: thin-fruited.

Leptochlo'a: Gledhill says delicate-grass. The epither deriving from the Greek leptos, "thin, slender," and chloa, "a grass," referring to the inflorescences. The genus Leptochloa was published by Ambroise Marie François Joseph Palisot de Beauvois in 1812 and is called by the rather curious name sprangletop grass, "sprangle" meaning, at least in parts of the U.S., spread out in different directions, like this grass's flowers. The species Leptochloa fascicularis is a rather weedy-looking grass that likes to sprawl across open ground.

leptocla'dos: from Greek leptos, "narrow, slender," and klados, "branch," meaning with slender shoots.

leptophyl'la/leptophyl'lum: narrow-leaved.

leptosta'chya/leptosta'chyus: with a narrow or slender spike, from the Greek leptos, "thin/slender" and stachys, "spike/ear of corn," referring to a thin flower inflorescence.

Lespede'za: named for Vincente Manuel de Céspedes y Velasco (1720?-1794) (sometimes spelled as Zéspedes), a Spanish colonel and field marshal in the Spanish Royal Army who served briefly as acting Governor of Santiago de Cuba from 1781 to 1782, and then as Governor of the Spanish province of East Florida from 1784 to 1790. He was born in Valencia, Spain, in 1720 or 1721. Following the Spanish exodus of 1763, twenty years of British rule, and the retrocession of Florida to Spain in 1784, Céspedes faced many problems concerning the disposition of property. His manner of addressing them was expeditious and suitable to the complex situation in St. Augustine. And much of his time was spent addressing this issue. He began to attract settlers to East Florida, granting them lands, exemption from taxes for ten years, and delivery of cash bonuses, and especially promoted the emigration of settlers who were not of Spanish origin. Alexander McGillivray, a Creek diplomat and trader, wrote to Céspedes in 1789 after walking out on talks with United States representatives in Georgia. McGillivray was convinced the United States sought to expand southward into Spanish territory, and remarked he was pleased to have the Spanish as an ally. According to American botanist Asa Gray, the flowering plant genus Lespedeza was named in honor of Céspedes, who had written a letter giving André Michaux permission to explore East Florida in search of new species of plants. When Michaux´s book Flora Boreali-Americana was printed in 1803, the name "de Céspedes" was misspelled as "de Lespedez", from which was derived the current botanical name of the plant. The genus Lespedeza has been called lespedeza or bush-clover.

Leucan'themum: from the Greek leukos, "white," and anthemon, "flower," C. leucanthemum is the Old World ox-eye daisy now renamed Leucanthemum vulgare. The genus Leucanthemum is called oxeye daisy and was published by Philip Miller in 1754.

leucar'pum: from Greek leukos, "white" and karpos, "fruit."

Leuco'jum: Stearn says the Greek name for various white-flowered scented plants, from leukos, "white," and ion, "violet," later transferred to the snowflake. Common names include snowflake, snowball, dewdrop and St. Agnes' flower. The only St. Agnes I could uncover is a young girl named Agnes who was an early Christian and died a virgin-martyr at the age of 12 or 13 on 21 January 304 because she refused to forsake her belief in God. St. Agnes is among other things the patron saint of gardeners. The genus Leucojum was published by Carl Linnaeus in 1753 and is called snowflake.

leucolep'is: from Geek leucos, "white," and lepis, "scale," alluding to stem leaves.

leucophae'a: ashen, pale brown.

Leucospor'a: from the Greek leucos, "white or clear," and spora, "seed," alluding to transparency of matured seeds. The genus Leucospora was published by Thomas Nuttall in 1834 and is called simply leucospora.

Leuco'thoe: named for the mythological Leucothoë, one of the many loves of Apollo, a legendary Persian princess supposed to have been changed by Apollo into a sweet-scented shrub. There are several figures in mythology named Leucothoe and it is by no means clear which one is meant here or why this derivation has anything to do with the plant. Wikipedia says "In Greek mythology Leucothoe was a Babylonian princess. The daughter of Orchamus, a king of Persia, Leucothoe was either a lover of the sun god Helios or a victim of rape. A nymph or Leucothoe's own sister named Clytie, who loved Helios and was jealous of Leucothoe, informed Leucothoe's father that Leucothoe, despite being unmarried, was no longer a virgin, whereupon Orchamus buried his daughter alive in punishment. Helios then transformed Leucothoe's dead body into a frankincense tree. This is a tale told in Ovid's Metamorphoses. The genus Leucothoe was published in 1834 by David Don.

lewis'ii: named for John B. Lewis (1868-1957), naturalist, farmer and agricultural agent in Virginia. This was a difficult one to research as his middle name is spelled in various ways in different sources and there is very little information about him online. JSTOR and the Harvard University Herbarium database has his middle name as Barzillae, Cornell and the American Ornithological Union has it as Barzillai, and the University of North Carolina Wilson Special Collections Library where his papers are housed has it as Brazilia, so I'm not sure which is correct. His papers have not been digitized and made available on line, but a listing of them includes descriptions of homesteading in Iowa, 1872-1880, farm life in Pulaski County, Kentucky, in the 1880s, farming in the Great Dismal Swamp near Norfolk, Virginia, 1903-1911, farm life in Brunswick County, Virginia, and his work as a county farm agent, 1916-1936. An obituary in the Richmond Times-Dispatch , 9 June 1957, says that he was one of Virginia's first county agents and for many years was known throughout the state as a naturalist. In contrast to the UNC material, it says that he began his work as an extension agent in Norfolk County in 1910 and was Brunswick County agent from 1916 to 1928 when he retired to devote all his time to his avocation as a naturalist. It further says "He then attended Cornell University to pursue his nature study and spent the remainder of his life in research and writing for scientific and nature publications. He was a charter member of the Virginia Ornithological Society, the Virginia Academy of Sciences, the Audubon Society of America, and the Wilson Ornithological Society. David Hollombe pointed me to an article written just after Lewis' death in The Raven, Bulletin of the Virginia Society of Ornithology by Dr. Alfred Akerman who was a district forester and met Lewis in 1922 and worked with him and knew him very well. He says: "John Lewis was more than a technical naturalist. He was a technical naturalist with the soul of a poet. He collected shrubs, herbaceous plants, birds, mammals, amphibians, and reptiles. He found over 700 species of plants, and dried and pressed specimens of them. He noted over 100 birds, and collected 26 specimens of mammals, 16 amphibians, and 19 reptiles." Dr. Fernald of Harvard who was working on a revision of Gray's Manual of Botany visited him several times and after being shown it named an undescribed species of ginger Asarum lewisii (now Hexastylis lewisii) in his honor. He died in Brunswick County.