"P van Rijckevorsel" wrote:
Matching botanical names to vernacular names is a hazardous undertaking.

Phred schreef
Yeah. This used to be rubbed into us in first year botany at Univ.
of Queensland. The example was usually given of eucalypts called
"mountain ash" (IIRC 8-).

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The 'ashes' are a group of some 35 species? Series Obliquae
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In one part of southern Australia this was
a splendid tree (_E. regnans_) attaining up to 100 metres tall (see
e.g. http://www.museum.vic.gov.au/forest/plants/ash.html )

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Actually the good ones are three species Eucalyptus delegatensis (syn
Eucalyptus gigantea), Eucalyptus regnans and Eucalyptus obliqua. The wood is
traded here as Tasmanian oak and used in oak furniture (the backs, with the
bits in sight made of red oak).
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Elsewhere, other species of "mountain ash" were nowhere near as useful
for timber -- much to the chagrin of a company which allegedly ordered
a boatload of "mountain ash" from the wrong colony in the dim past!

Of course, in recent times, practising agronomists and similar have
become so dissatisfied with continuing botanical revisions that we now
regard common names as the only long term standards! ;-)

Cheers, Phred.

For some plants there are standardized common names, mostly commercially
important ones, and, yes, sometimes these are more stable than botanical
ones. However it is not only binary names that are at risk. Many families
are reduced to subfamilies and some of them change their names in the
process as well ...
PvR