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Identifications L-R: Yellow lady's slipper (Cypripedium parviflorum); Bladder campion (Silene cucullata); Fire pink (Silene virginica); Cancer root (Conopholis americana); Needle-tip blue-eyed grass (Sisyrinchium mucronatum), Eastern ninebark (Physocarpus opulifolius), Green and gold (Chrysogonum virginianum).

Virginia Plant Names:
Latin and Greek Meanings and Derivations
An Annotated Dictionary of Botanical and Biographical Etymology
Compiled by Michael L. Charters

  • quadr-: in fours, from Latin quadrus, "four-fold."
  • quadran'gula: four-angled or four-sided, from Medieval Latin quadrangularis, "having four corners," and Late Latin quadrangulus, "having four angles."
  • quadrangula'ta/quadrangular'is: with four angles.
  • quadriflor'a: with four flowers.
  • quadrifo'lia: four-leaved or -needled.
  • quadriradia'ta: with four ray florets.
  • quadrival'vis: with four valves.
  • quamo'clit: Stearn says derivation of the name is obscure, possible from Greek quamos, "bean." Gledhill says "from the Mexican vernacular name for Ipomoea quamoclit, Indian pink, some interpret as dwarf-kidney." Wikipedia says "There are two schools of thought as to the origin of the species epithet quamoclit. The first, originally put forward by the French writer and botanist Alexandre de Théis, is that it is derived from Greek. The second is that the name comes from cuamochitl in the Nahuatl language of Mexico. Neither explanation can be verified, although the botanist Daniel F. Austin in an article entitled "The Origin of Quamoclit (Ipomoea quamoclit, Convolvulaceae): A Review" in the journal Economic Botany. 67 (1): 63–79, makes an argument that the latter is the most likely.
  • quercifo'lius: with foliage like the genus Quercus.
  • Quer'cus: the classical Latin name for the English oak, Quercus robur, from Roman times. Interestingly no certain derivation for the name exists, possibly t derives from the Celtic quer, "fine," and cuez, "tree." John Cameron's Gaelic names of plants (Scottish and Irish) (1883) states: "Quercus — Said in botanical works to be from the Celtic, quer, fine. There is no such word in any Celtic dialect, and even [Arnold] Pictet has failed, after expending two pages on it, to explain it." Another source (Gledhill) says that it shares the same linguistic derivation as the Arabic al-qurk and the word cork. Also it has been suggested that it comes from the Proto-Indo-European word kwerkwu which in turn is derived from perkwu, "oak. "The genus Quercus was published in 1753 by Carl Linnaeus and is called oak.
  • quihou'i: named for Antoine Nicholas Quihou (1820-1889), French horticulturist, from whose garden the type specimen was collected. He was once superintendent of the Jardin d'Acclimatation in Paris.
  • quina'ta: in fives, presumably a reference to its lobed leaves from Latin quinatus, "five-fold."
  • quinquefo'lia/quinquefo'lius: five-leaved.