Nab'alus: derivation uncertain and none of the standard sources say anything. I thought at first it might have something to do with the old city of Nablus on the West Bank. However the book Wildflowers of the Indiana Dunes National Park says: "Nabalus is Latin for a North American name for rattlesnake root (Nabalus altissimus)." I haven't been able to confirm this. The genus Nabalus was published in 1825 by Alexandre Henri Cassini.

Naj'as: from Najas, one of the three mythological water nymphs or Naiads presifing over springs and streams, alluding to the plant's aquatic habitat, from the Sanskrit nāga (with a hard "g") meaning "snake." The genus Najas was published by Carl Linnaeus in 1753 and is called naiad, bushy pondweed or water-nymph.

Nandi'na: a Latinized version of the Japanese name Nanten, Nandin or Nandyna. The genus Nandina was published by Carl Peter Thunberg in 1781.

nantucketen'sis: of or from Nantucket.

Napae'a: Gledhill says of the specific epithet napaea: "of woodland glades, glen or dell." And the common name of Napaea dioica is glade mallow. Flora of North America says of the generic epithet Napaea: "Greek napaea, wood nymph, alluding to woodland habitat." The genus Napaea was published by Carl Linnaeus in 1753.

na'pus: with a little turnip-like root.

Narcis'sus: named for the handsome son of the river god Cephissus and the nymph Liriope, who was so entranced by his own beauty that he spurned all others. He was condemned to fell in love with himself in such a way that he could not have what he desired, and seeing his reflection in a pool, that which was only shadow and unreachable, he was so overcome that he wasted away. The gods then turned him into the Narcissus flower. The genus Narcissus was published by Carl Linnaeus in 1753 and is called daffodil, jonquil or narcissus.

nash'ii: named for George Valentine Nash (1864-1921), an American botanist. He was the Head Gardener and Curator of

Nastur'tium: from the Latin nasus tortus, meaning "twisted nose", in reference to the effect on the nasal passages of eating the plants. The genus Nasturtium was published by William Townsend Aiton in 1812 and is called watercress.

na'tans: floating, present active participle of natō (“to swim, float”).

neglec'ta/neglec'tus: neglected or overlooked.

negun'do: from the native Sanskrit and Bengali nirgundi, the specific name of the plant Vitex negundo and given to Acer negundo because of a supposed similarity of leaf.

Neill'ia: named for Patrick Neill (1776-1851), Scottish printer, naturalist and horticulturist. Wikipedia says: “He was born

in Edinburgh on 25 October 1776, and spent his life there. [He attended Edinburgh University but did not graduate.] He became the head of the large printing firm of Neill & Co., of Edinburgh, but during the last thirty years of his life he took little active part in its management. Early in his career he devoted his spare time to natural history, especially botany and horticulture. The Wernerian Natural History Society was established in 1808, and in 1809 the Caledonian Horticultural Society was founded. Neill was the first secretary [and a founding member] of both societies, holding the latter post for forty years. He was

Fellow of the Linnean Society and the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and honorary LL.D. of Edinburgh University [accounting for the fact that he was often referred to as Dr. Neill]. He served as President of the Botanical Society of Edinburgh in 1842–43.” He was the author of A Tour Through Some of the Islands of Orkney and Shetland (1806) and The Fruit, Flower, and Kitchen Garden. He never married and died after a paralytic stroke at his residence of Canonmills Cottage near Edinburgh. The genus Neillia was published by David Don in 1825 and is called lace shrub. (Photo credit: Art UK)

Nelum'bo: from nelumbu, a Sinhalese (Sri Lankan) name for the lotus plant. The genus Nelumbo was published by Michel Adanson in 1763 and is called lotus or lotus-lily.

Nemo'phila: from the Greek nemos, "a glade," and phileo, "to love," meaning that it has "an affinity for groves." Nemophila is called baby blue eyes and was published by Thomas Nuttall in 1822.

nemora'lis: growing in groves or woods.

neodioi'ca: unknown meaning. The prefix neo usually means "new, recent," and dioica literally means "of two houses," referring to the separate staminate and pistillate plants.

neofluvia'lis: the prefix neo means "new" and fluvialis means "growing in a river or flowing water," but how this applies to the species Crataegus succulenta var. neofluvialis is unknown.

Nepe'ta: the ancient Latin name of the aromatic plant catnip. The genus Nepeta was published by Carl Linnaeus in 1753 and is called catnip or catmint.

nepeto'ides: resembling the genus Nepeta.

nervo'sa: having well-developed or distinct veins or nerves, usually the leaves. CasaBio says "Sinewy or vigorous, from Latin nervus, "sinew, energy" and -ōsus which is a suffix added to a noun to form an adjective indicating an abundance of that noun, and can also mean full of, overly, prone to."

Nestron'ia: FNA says from "Greek knestron, name for Daphne." This presumably refers to the genus Daphne, but I can't make any further connections. The genus Nestronia was published by Constantine Samuel Rafinesque in 1838 and is called simply nestronia.

Nican'dra: named for Nicander, Greek poet of Colophon, Asia Minor, physician and grammarian who wrote on the subject

of plants around 100 BC, notably in his poem Alexipharmaca, which treats of poisons and their antidotes. He was born in Claros near Colophon in modern-day Turkey. Wikipedia says: “He wrote a number of works both in prose and verse, of which two survive complete. The longest, Theriaca, is a hexameter poem on the nature of venomous animals and the wounds which they inflict. The other, Alexipharmaca, consists of 630 hexameters treating of poisons and their antidotes. Nicander's main source for medical information was the physician Apollodorus of Egypt. Among his lost works,

Heteroeumena was a mythological epic, used by Ovid in the Metamorphoses and epitomized by Antoninus Liberalis; Georgica, of which considerable fragments survive, was perhaps imitated by Virgil. The works of Nicander were praised by Cicero (De oratore, i. 16), imitated by Ovid and Lucan, and frequently quoted by Pliny and other writers (e.g. Tertullian in De Scorpiace, I, 1).” Encyclopedia Britannica says: “Nicander’s reputation does not seem justified; his works, as Plutarch says in De audiendis poetis, have nothing poetic about them except the metre, and the style is bombastic and obscure. However, they contain some interesting information on the ancient approach to the subjects treated.” Almost nothing is known about his life. He may have died in Alexandria, Egypt. The genus Nicandra was published by Michel Adanson in 1763 and is called apple-of-peru.

Nicotia'na: named for Jean Nicot de Villemain (1530-1600), French diplomat, scholar and the person supposedly

responsible for introducing tobacco into France about 1560, also author of one of the first French language dictionaries. He was born in Nimes to a notary father and studied in Toulouse and Paris before entering into service of the French court in 1553. In 1559 he became French ambassador to Portugal. While in Lisbon he made his first acquaintance with tobacco. Encyclopedia Britannica says: “He learned of the plant and its medicinal properties from Portuguese humanist Damião de Góis. Intrigued by the details related by de Góis, Nicot decided to test a tobacco ointment on a Lisbon man with a tumour.

The man was cured, and further investigation of the plant’s medicinal applications convinced Nicot that it was a medical nostrum, effecting cures for conditions from cancer to gout to headache. In 1560 Nicot sent tobacco seeds—as well as figs, oranges, and lemons—to the queen of France, Catherine de Médici, at Paris. Along with the specimens, Nicot included a letter expounding the medicinal properties of tobacco. In 1561 Nicot returned to the court in Paris, where he presented the queen with leaves from a tobacco plant. It is believed that the queen received instructions from Nicot for preparing a simple headache remedy by crushing the leaves into a powder that could be inhaled through the nose. The remedy, which proved satisfactory, soon became popular with members of the French court, who used tobacco powder to stave off various illnesses. In this preventative role, tobacco became identified with the pleasures of nobility, and it is likely that many users developed addictions to it. Eventually the plant was cultivated in France and other parts of northern Europe to fulfill demand. In the 17th century in England the crushed preparation became widely known as snuff.” Nicot eventially was granted the title Villemain and retired to his home on land given him near the village of Brie-Comte-Robert, located in the north-central region of Île-de-France. It was here that he composed the French dictionary Thresor de la langue françoyse, tant ancienne que moderne (Treasure of the French Language) in 1606, which was an extension of French humanist Robert Estienne’s Dictionaire françois-latin (French-Latin Dictionary) published in 1531. The genus Nicotiana was named in his honor by Carl Linnaeus in 1753. The active ingredient in tobacco, nicotine, was also named for him. He died on May 4, 1600 in Paris, France.

Nigel'la: blackish. Stearn says from the diminutive of Latin niger, "black," in allusion to the color of the seeds. The genus Nigella was published by Carl Linnaeus in 1753.

ni'gra/ni'grum: black.

nigres'cens: blackish, becoming black.

nig'ricans: blackish.

nigromargina'ta: black-bordered or black-margined.

nit'ida/nit'idum: derived from the Latin meaning "shining, lustrous, whitish." The species Dichanthelium nitidum is called shining panic grass.

niva'le/niva'lis: snow-white, growing near snow.

niv'ea: snow-white.

noctiflor'a: night-flowering.

nodiflor'a: with flowers borne from the nodes.

nodo'sus: with conspicuous nodes.

nonscrip'ta: without markings, from the Latin non-scriptus meaning "unlettered or unmarked, without writing" and was intended to distinguish this plant from the classical hyacinth of Greek mythology which Apollo had marked with his tears spelling ai or aiai, a Greek cry of grief meaning ‘alas.’ The etymological root of Hyacinthus is derived from the Greek Hyakinthos who was a lover of the god Apollo. He had tried to catch a discus thrown by Apollo but the god of wind, Zephyrus, jealous that Hyakinthos preferred Apollo, blew it off course killing Hyakinthos. Apollo then unwilling to let him be taken by Hades caused a flower to spring from his blood. The binomial Hyacinthoides nonscripta (sometimes written as non-scripta) was originally published by Cal Linnaeus in another genus but then validly published in the Hyacinthaceae by Pierre Chouard in 1934.

norma'lis: representative of the genus, usual, around the norm.

norveg'ica: of or from Norway.

nota'tum: marked, spotted, from Latin noto, "to note or observe."

Nothoscor'dum: from the Greek nothos, "false," and scordum, "garlic," the common name being false garlic. The genus Nothoscordum was published by Karl Sigismund Kunth in 1843 and is called crow-poison or false garlic.

nottowaya'nus: named for the Nottaway Valley of southeastern Virginia. Bromus nottawayensis is called nottaway valley brome grass.

no'vae-angli'ae: of or from New England.

noveboracen'sis: of New York. From nove, "new," Eboracum, "York," and -ensis, "belonging to." Eboracum was a fort and later a city in the Roman province of Britannia. In its prime it was the largest town in northern Britain and a provincial capital. The site remained occupied after the decline of the Western Roman Empire and ultimately developed into the present-day city of York, occupying the same site in North Yorkshire, England.

no'vi-bel'gi: from New York, formerly called Novum Belgium, USA.

nuda'tus: naked, bare.

nudicau'le: with a bare stem.

nu'dum: bare, naked.

nummular'ia: resembling a coin, nummus, often applied to plants with small, almost circular leaves.

Nu'phar: ultimately from the Persian word nufar which is a geographic location and a name for a water lily. Nufar was an ancient Sumerian settlement whose ruins lie at Nuffar in modern Iraq. Under various names it persisted as a settlement throughout the periods of Greek and Roman engagement in Babylonia. The genus Nuphar was published by James Edward Smith in 1809 and is called pond-lily or spatterdock.

nu'tans: nodding or drooping, usually the flowers.

Nuttallan'thus: see following entry. The genus Nuttallanthus was published by David Andrew Sutton in 1988 and is called toadflax.

nuttall'ii: named for the Englishman Thomas Nuttall (1786-1859), a botanist, ornithologist, zoologist, curator of the

Harvard Botanic Gardens, and author in 1816 of The Genera of North American Plants. In 1834 he ventured overland to Oregon with his friend Nathaniel Wyeth (see Wyethia), sailed twice to Hawaii, then visited California where he was recognized by a Harvard student who had taken up a sea-faring life, Richard Henry Dana, and who described Nuttall in Two Years Before the Mast. Although not well known in his native country, he was highly praised by the famed American botanist Asa Gray. He was born in Settle in theYorkshire Dales region of England, grew up in Blackburn, Lancashire, and spent some years

as an apprentice printer for his uncle in Liverpool before going to London and then leaving for the United States at the age of 22, settling in Philadelphia where he met and first began to study botany with Professor Benjamin Smith Barton. He appears to have had little in the way of formal education but was clearly a man of intellect. He made trips through Virginia, North Carolina, Missouri, Arkansas and the Great Lakes region collecting plants and identifying species. In 1811, being concerned about the threat of war between his native country and the United States, he went back to England to organize and curate the many specimens he had collected, returning to the U.S. in 1814. From 1818 to 1820 he travelled along the Arkansas and Red Rivers, finally returning to Philadelphia and publishing his Journal of Travels into the Arkansas Territory during the year 1819. His Genera of North American Plants appeared in 1818 and was based on the collections he made on these trips. He became a lecturer in natural history at Harvard University in 1822 and it was then that he became interested in ornithology. He was elected an Associate Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1823 and became curator of the botanical gardens at Harvard University in 1825. The first volume of his Manual of the Ornithology of the United States and of Canada appeared in 1832. Wikipedia says: “In 1834 he resigned his post and set off west again on an expedition led by Nathaniel Jarvis Wyeth, this time accompanied by the naturalist John Kirk Townsend. They travelled through Kansas, Wyoming and Utah, and then down the Snake River to the Columbia. Nuttall then sailed across the Pacific Ocean to the Hawaiian Islands in December. He returned in the spring of 1835 and spent the next year botanizing in the Pacific Northwest, an area already covered by David Douglas. On the Pacific coast, Nuttall heard of the ship Alert leaving San Diego in May 1836 and bound for Boston. It is here that he miraculously encounters Richard Henry Dana Jr., a former student of his at Harvard who had set sail from Boston on a two-year voyage to the California coast at about the same time that Nuttall had begun his expedition. Dana writes in his Two Years Before the Mast of his amazement at seeing his old professor 'strolling about San Diego beach, in a sailor's pea jacket, with a wide straw hat, and barefooted, with his trousers rolled up to his knees, picking up stones and shells.' Nuttall was taken on the Alert as a passenger along with many of his flora and fauna specimens which he brought back to Boston to be cataloged and preserved for posterity. Dana writes that he had some occasions to speak with Nuttall about his botanizing while Dana was at the helm of the ship 'on a calm night' and was amused to hear his fellow shipmates refer to Nuttall as 'Old Curious' for all the curiosities he conveyed on board.” He worked at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia from 1836 to 1841, making contributions to Asa Gray and John Torrey’s Flora of North America. He left America in 1841 and made only one more visit to the United States in 1847 and 1848. He lived in Lancashire until his death.

Nyctagina'ceae: from the Greek nyx or nyktos, "night," and New Latin -ago, a suffix that implies resemblance to the word that precedes it, this family name is based on the generic epithet Nyctago.

nyctagin'ea: night-blooming.

nycte'lea: Flora Neomexicana says for the generic epithet Nyctelea: "Greek nyx, 'night,' and teleios, 'referring to the gods,' alluding to the god Nyctelius, also called Bacchus, whose rites were celebrated at night." But for the specific epithet nyctelea, it says "Nyctelea, used in apposition: resembling the genus Nyctelea." Knowing that Linnaeus was fond of using classical and mythological names, it is perhaps reasonable to suspect that his choice of the binomial Ellisia nyctelea had something to do with the god Nyctelius. Incidentally, one of its common names is Aunt Lucy, but I have been unable to find out why.

Nymphae'a: from the Greek nymphaia, referring to a water nymph, which is appropriate because Nymphaea is a genus of aquatic plants. In Greek mythology, the nymphs were generally regarded as personifications of nature typically tied to a specific place or landform, and are usually depicted as maidens. They were not necessarily immortal, but lived much longer than human beings. The genus Nymphaea was published in 1753 by Carl Linnaeus who was found of taking names from mythology. It is called water-lily.

Nympho'ides: resembling genus Nymphaea. The genus Nymphoides was published by Jean-François Séguier in 1756 and is called floating heart.

Nys'sa: Stearn says "named for Nysa or Nyssa, one of the water nymphs." It was at first unclear to me whether there was a nymph named Nysa or whether Nysa was the name of a mythical mountain where nymphs lived as different sources say different things, however I did find an interesting 1959 article in Rhodora, the journal of the New England Botanical Club, by Richard Eyde entitled “The Discovery and Naming of the Genus Nyssa,” which provided much valuable information. “According to Webster’s New International Dictionary, Nyssa is a Latinization of a Greek word meaning a goal or turning-post. A similar etymology is given by Dr. Roland Brown in his Composition of Scientific Words. Other sources list Nyssa as the name of a nymph. This nymph has been described as the nurse of Bacchus, or simply as a water-nymph, or both.” The first to use this name was Jan Frederik Gronovius in Leyden, Netherlands. His custom had been to assign descriptive Latin polynomials to plants that he was receiving specimens of from John Clayton in America. When Carl Linnaeus arrived in Leyden in 1735 with the manuscript of his Systema Naturae, Gronovius paid for it to be published, and it was in this publication that the name Nyssa first appeared. Clayton had called this plant tupelo, and Linnaeus credited Gronovius as the author of the name Nyssa. Linnaeus included it again, credited to Gronovius, in his Hortus cliffortianus (1737), as did Gronovius in his Flora Virginica (1739). Eyde continues: “Much of this etymological confusion is due to Gronovius’ choice of an unusual spelling for Nysa, a word which appears occasionally in classical writings as a personal name and as a geographical name. The Greek nysa indeed meant a ‘turning post” or “a goal,” but Gronovius had no such meaning in mind when naming his new genus. We may be sure of this, for Nyssa appears on the list of names of mythological deities retained by Linnaeus when he developed his system of nomenclature. In that list the name is accompanied by the brief explanation, “Nyssa nympharum una,” literally “one of the nymphs.” Gronovius, who regularly read proof of Linnaeus’ publications, would not have permitted such an explanation if it were not the correct one. Linnaeus also spared us from conjecture as to why these trees were named for a nymph when he wrote in Hortus cliffortianus, “Nyssa dicitur cum in aquis crescat” (“It is called Nyssa when it grows in the waters.”) And Linnaeus had reference to the polynomial previous applied to Clayton’s tupelo which began “Arbor in aqua nascens,” or “A tree growing in water.” Gray’s Manual thus provided the correct explanation when it stated that Nyssa was named for a nymph because it grows in the water. The genus Nyssa was published by Carl Linnaeus in 1753 and is called tupelo or gum.