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Osage-orange versus Osage orange
Someone noted that Osage orange is sometimes hyphenated. Some plant
writers have stipulated that osage-orange be hyphenated because it is not a true orange species like the sweet orange. http://www.ars-grin.gov/~sbmljw/introd.htm#common However, this hyphenation rule is probably broken more often than it is followed. The USDA Plants database http://plants.usda.gov/ uses Osage orange. Even dictionaries use Osage orange: http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=osage%20orange There are many hundreds, if not thousands of common plant names that would need to be hyphenated to follow this rule, including hedge-apple, sugar-beet, Douglas-fir, Wollemi-pine, dawn-redwood, golden-Vietnamese-cypress, giant-sequoia, tulip-poplar, umbrella-pine, incense-cedar, Norfolk-Island-pine, bald-cypress, red-cedar, golden-larch, Kentucky-coffee-tree, black-locust, honey-locust, mock-orange, Oregon-grape-holly, mountain-laurel, Swedish-ivy, silk-oak, poison-oak, Jerusalem-oak, she-oak, African-oak, Jerusalem-artichoke, poison-ivy, Japanese-ivy, Boston-ivy, German-ivy, ground-ivy, castor-bean, asparagus-fern, screw-pine, ground-pine, strawberry-geranium, African-violet, rock-rose, moss-rose, club-moss, bell-pepper, sweet-potato, milk-vetch, Jerusalem-cherry, lily-of-the-valley, water-lily, pond-lily, sego-lily, etc. To make matters more complex, they want to have exceptions, such as sugarbeet. However, ultimately the rule is silly for several reasons including the following: 1. Common names are not scientific nor officially regulated by plant taxonomists. 2. Scientific names are needed for accuracy so a common name alone is insufficient for most publications. 3. There is no method to mark the difference between hyphenated and unhyphenated versions when speaking. 4. There are many single-word common names that are misapplied such as geranium for Pelargonium species, peanut, mayapple, mimosa, etc. 5. It would require a large and cumbersome code of nomenclature for common plant names to officially assign each common name, such as locust and hemlock, to one genus, family or phylum and to list the many exceptions to the hyphenation rule. David R. Hershey |
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