P van Rijckevorsel wrote:
Curious. Within the first ten hits of my search engine I got this:
Behen: From Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913) [web1913]
Behen \Be"hen\, Behn \Behn\, n. [Per. & Ar. bahman, behmen, an herb,
whose leaves resemble ears of corn, saffron.] (Bot.)
(a) The {Centaurea behen}, or saw-leaved centaury.
(b) The {Cucubalus behen}, or bladder campion, now
called {Silene inflata}.
(c) The {Statice limonium}, or sea lavender.

schreef
This exactly why I asked my question. I found 20 plant names all with
"behen" as the second part of the name (a latin name being the first
part). Have had no luck finding the meaning of behen in these names.

Jack

+ + +
Looking at IPNI there appear to be the following basionyms:
Astragalus behen
Centaurea behen
Silene behen and / or Cucubalus behen [not sure if these are the same plant]
Erica behen
Statice behen

The way I count that makes five or six. Not really a popular epithet at all.
BTW, words like Astragalus, Centaurea and Erica are Greek, not Latin.

The obvious assumption would be that these plants look like behen or are
used as behen. Since the dictionary states "whose leaves resemble ears of
corn" the logical thing would be to look at the leaves of these plants.
However, if these pictures are accurate this looks unpromising:

http://www.uochb.cas.cz/~natur/cerambyx/centbeh.htm

A clue as to its appeal may be found here [?]:

http://www.reason2shop.com/hernirsexvit.html
http://www.herbsandfood.com/products/herbs.html

PvR