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. The genus Vaccaria was published by Nathanael Matthaeus von Wolf in 1776 and it has a number of common names including cowherb, cowcockle, cow basil, cow soapwort, and prairie carnation.

Vaccin'ium: the ancient Latin name of the bilberry. Regarding the name bilberry, one source says that it is derived from the Danish word bollebar, which means "dark berry." Wikipedia says "The name "bilberry" appears to have a Scandinavian origin, possibly from as early as 1577, being similar to the Danish word bølle for whortleberry with the addition of "berry." And Wiktionary has this: "Probably of North Germanic origin (Danish bøllebær), from Old Norse bolli (Proto-Germanic bullǭ) + ber." The Jepson eflora says the fruit of this species is generally blue. Other sources say deep purple. The genus Vaccinium was published by Carl Linnaeus in 1753 and is called blueberry.

vaginiflor'us: from the Latin vagina, "sheath," and flos, "flower," referring to the flowering heads which are enclosed by the leaf sheaths.

vail'iae: named for Anna Murray Vail (1863-1955), an American botanist and first librarian of the New York Botanical

Garden. She was born on New York’s East Side and her early education was in Europe, but by 1895 she was back in the United States working at Columbia University with geologist Nathaniel Lord Britton, who with his wife Elizabeth Gertrude Britton, was the founding force behind the New York Botanical Garden. It’s unclear to me what the sequence of her activities was from 1895, because in 1898 she donated a herbarium which consisted of 3000 specimens, mostly from the eastern United States, to the newly founded New York Botanical Garden, and I don't know when she had time to accumulate this

herbarium. In the same year the botanist Henry Hurd Rusby published the genus Vailia and named it in Anna Murray Vail's honor. She was a member of the Torrey Botanical Club, and had apparently been able to establish a reputation sufficient to justify such an honor. Also in 1898 she co-authored a work with Elizabeth Gertrude Britton among others, entitled "New or Rare Mosses." In January 1900, she became the first librarian of the newly founded Bronx institution's library, a post she held until September 1907. While in New York, she was the author of over a dozen scientific papers. Her notes, preserved in the Archives and Manuscripts collection of the New York Botanical Garden include sketches of some of the plants she studied. In 1903 Vail traveled to Paris, France, for an auction of the botanical literature of the late Professor Claude Thomas Alexis Jordan. She obtained over 400 items, including ten volumes of John Sibthorp's Flora graeca. This was one of several trips she made to Europe to acquire materials for the Library, which began with some 7,500 volumes when it opened to the public in 1900. It reached 20,000 volumes at the time of Vail’s departure in 1907, when she resigned following an unpaid summer leave of absence granted to visit her mother in France and where she would eventually spend the remainder of her life. During her Library tenure she took several trips to Europe to acquire materials for the growing Library collections and wrote a paper about the earliest female botanist in North America, “Jane Colden, An Early New York Botanist,” published in the journal Torreya. Vail’s own botanical interests focused on the Leguminosae and Asclepiadaceae families and the Psoralea and Galactia genera. Also in those years the catalog was kept up to date with the regular addition of hand-written cards. She established publication exchanges with 500 institutions, oversaw the first expansion of Library shelving and the first archival acquisitions, in addition to arranging for the transfer of botanical materials from the libraries of area institutions and the ongoing purchase of antiquarian material from European vendors and auctions. Several years after resigning her post she moved to France where she lived through two World Wars. During World War I she was active in The American Fund for French Wounded which was founded to further the relief efforts of American women during the war, eventually becoming its treasurer. The fund was founded by American women living abroad, to provide relief to small hospitals in France during the war. Anne Morgan, daughter of financier J.P. Morgan, was the first commander of the Fund. Few French women of the time were licensed to drive, but American volunteers, including Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, got behind the wheel in service to several relief organizations. While in France, she acquired a house in Héricy, a small town located on the Seine opposite the palace of Fontainebleau. Her house was on part of a great estate designed by famous French landscape architect André Le Nôtre. Her study of his work and her writings earned her a nomination for a Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur in 1925, which she eventually received in 1948. Here she spent her remaining years, continuing her work as a librarian until blindness forced her by 1952 to stop. She died in Vieux Logis in 1955, and is buried in the municipal cemetery at Héricy.

valdivia'na: of Valdivia, Chile.

Valeria'na: a medieval Latin name 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 ("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." Quoted from a website on Roman history at http://www.unrv.com/), or to 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 and is just called valerian.

Valerianel'la: a diminutive of Valeriana, referring to the similarity to the genus Valeriana. The genus Valerianella was published by Philip Miller in 1754 and is called corn-salad or lamb's-lettuce.

val'ida/val'idus: strong in some sense such as smell, well-developed.

Vallisner'ia: named for Antonio Vallisneri (1661-1730), 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.

Vandenbosch'ia: for Roelof Benjamin van den Bosch (1810-1862), Dutch botanist, bryologist and lichenologist born in Rotterdam and known for stufying ferns and mosses, author of Bryologia javanica. The genus Vandenboschia was published in 1938 by Edwin Bingham Copeland.

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

variega'ta: variegated, i.e. different in some way.

va'seyi: named for Dr. George S. Vasey (1822-1893), 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 M.D. 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 M.A. 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 travelled 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). He died of peritonitis in the District of Columbia in 1893.

velu'tina/velu'tinum: velvety.

veneno'sa/veno'sus: very poisonous, from Latin venenum, "poison."

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

ventrico'sa: having a swelling on one side, distended to one side, bellied out below, from the Latin ventricosus, which means swollen or inflated.

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. The genus Veratrum was published by Carl Linnaeus in 1753 and is called white-hellebore, false-hellebore and bunchflower.

Verbas'cum: corrupted form of Barbascum, the ancient Latin name used by Pliny 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 and is called mullein.

Verbe'na: sacred bough, an ancient Latin name of the common European vervain, a plant sacred to the ancient Romans. Pliny the Elder describes verbena being placed on altars to Jupiter; it is not entirely clear if this referred to a verbena rather than 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 and is called vervain or just verbena.

verbena'cea: like 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, and it is variously known as crownbeard, wingstem or frostweed.

ver'na/ver'nus: of the spring, from Latin vernus, "springtime."

verna'lis: of spring, spring-flowering.

ver'nix: varnish. old French vernis, from medieval Latin vernix, for fragrant resin.

Vernon'ia: named for William Vernon (c.1666-c.1715), English botanist, entomologist, traveler, and plant collector who travelled to Maryland in 1698. He was born into a family of landowning gentry in Hertford where he received his early education before entering Peterhouse College, Cambridge. He graduated with a BA in 1689 and was named a Fellow of the College in 1692. Vernon became interested in mosses and Lepidoptera while at Cambridge in the late 17th century, and became friendly with John Ray in 1694, assisting him with his account of cryptogams in the third volume of his Historia Plantarum (1704). Vernon also knew James Petiver, who described him in Musci Petiveriani Centauria Prima (1695) as a man “who hath been very curious in the discovery of this minute Tribe of Plants.” He was a member of a botanical club that met at the Temple Coffee House in London between 1689 and 1706, whose other members included Adam Buddle, Nehemiah Grew, Martin Lister and Hans Sloane. Some of the plants that Vernon collected are in the Sloane herbarium in the Natural History Museum, London. in 1697/8, having procured a four-year leave of absence from Peterhouse College, he sailed to Maryland (where his elder brother Christopher had settled) for the purpose of collecting plants, animals, fossils and shells for the Royal Society and his friends at the botanical club. In the event, Vernon returned to England in late 1698, and almost immediately planned a trip to the Canaries, but despite obtaining funding from the Royal Society, Vernon missed his ship and got no further than the coast of Kent. He returned to Cambridge in 1702. Nothing is known of his later years, or of when or where he died. The genus Vernonia was published in 1791 by Johann Christian Schreber and is called ironweed.

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. The genus Veronica was published by Carl Linnaeus in 1753 and is called speedwell.

Veronicas'trum: from the genus Veronica plus the suffix -astrum indicating incomplete resemblance. The genus Veronicastrum was published by Philipp Conrad Fabricius in 1759 and is called culver's-root.

verruco'sum: warty.

versi'color: variously colored.

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

ver'um: true to type, standard, genuine.

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

vesiculo'sum: furnished with small bladders of vesicles, from Latin vesicula, "little blister," diminutive of vesica, "bladder, blister."

Vibur'num: a classical Latin name for one species of this genus, V. lantana, the so-called wayfaring tree. 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 and is called vetch or tare.

Vig'na: named for Domenico Vigna (1577-1647), physician, horticulturist, botanist and professor of botany at Pisa. He was born in Florence and was Director of the Botanical Garden at Pisa from 1609 to 1613, from 1616 to 1617 and again from 1632 to 1634. He was the author of a commentary on Theophrastus entitled Animadversiones, sive Observationes in libros de Historia et de causis plantarum Theophrasti which was published in 1625. He died at Pisa. The genus Vigna was published by Gaetano Savi in 1824 and is commonly called cowpea.

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

villosis'simum: very hairy, from villus, "hair," and -issimum, a superlative suffix usually denoting "very much," or "most."

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 is called periwinkle and was published by Carl Linnaeus in 1753.

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

vinif'era: wine-bearing, wine-poducing.

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. The genus Viola was published by Carl Linnaeus in 1753 and is called violet, johnny-jump-up or pansy.

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

vior'na: derivation unknown. The genus name Viorna is a synonym of Clematis, but what either the generic or specific epithet means is a mystery to me.

vi'rens: green, from Latin vireo, "to be green or verdant; to be fresh, vigorous or lively (not withered); to flourish, bloom."

virga'ta/virga'tum: wand-like, twiggy in growth, referring to the tall, bare stems, from 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.

virginia'nis/virginia'num: of or from Virginia.

virgin'ica/virgini'cum: of or from Virginia.

viridiflor'a/viridiflor'um: green-flowered, from Latin viridis, "green," and florum, "flower."

vir'ide/vir'idis: green.

viridis'sima: very green.

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

viscosis'sima: stickiest, very sticky, from the Latin viscos, "sticky," and issimus, "the most."

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

vita'cea: vine-like.

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 and is called chaste-tree.

viticaul'is: possibly grape-stemmed? I can find no reference in print or online as to meaning or derivation of this epithet, but the root -caulis usually refers to stems, and I can only guess that viti refers to the genus Vitis, and since Clematis viticaulis is sometimes referred to as grape leather-flower or grape clematis, that is probably the derivation.

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 and is called grape.

vittar'ia: for vitta, "ribbon, fillet or stripe" for the straplike shape of the fronds," this species called ribbon fern, grass fern or shoestring fern.

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

vivip'ara: viviparous, that is, bearing plantlets or bulblets on the leaves or in the inflorescence of the parent plant.

volu'bilis: twining, twisting or winding, from the Latin volvo or volvere, "to turn around, roll." As an aside, Volubilis was a Roman city located at the southwest extremity of the Roman Empire in modern-day Morocco.

vomitor'ia: emetic, causing vomiting.

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: usual, of the crowd, common, vulgar.

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.

vulpi'na: from vulpeja, fox, relating to foxes, of a fox. It is believed that foxes were attracted to this type of grapevine, and Linnaeus used the term vulpina to differentiate these smaller wild grapes from the other American known grapes. One of the common names of Vitis vulpina is fox grape.

vulpinoid'ea: relating to or resembling foxes. The species Carex vulpinoidea is commonly called fox sedge.