Haha!

That's fantastic Al, these snippets of information are great! You'll never live that one down ;) Love the Oxalis story too - so, not poisonous then? Wasn't in memory of Babe because he keeled over afterwards?

I was angling for a romantic bent to the women's names, such as maybe Benjamin had a thing for Audrey and Daniella. Or perhaps they're his daughters. But maybe botanists Audrey and Daniella just named their discoveries after themselves...

Any other names along this theme for Ficus?

If not a species, mostly cute names picked for marketing purpose. Aglaonema, croton, and rose need such name since too many hybrids out there. Audrey, daniella etc sound better and easy to remember for western market rather than aikamiura, tzubasaamami, mobutuseseseko or such name..

If it's work for aglaonema.. ficus might not different..

A lot of those women's names are for cultivars so the nursery that decided that a piece of a plant should be cloned and then sold off as being exclusive will give it a name beyond the species name to differentiate it from others of the same species. That can be patented as well. Those sorts of names have nothing to do with scientific names, they're just for commerce and marketing.

When it comes to describing plants and naming them there's a lot of ways they can go about it. Often the name will reflect some botanical characteristic of the plant. Geographical location and compass points are also common sources for names. And what's gaining more traction these days it to incorporate the plant's name from an indigenous language. But many taxonomists will incorporate their own name or those of friends and associates. In one instance I know of (not for a plant) they auctioned off the right to name a new species and the money was going to go to research.

But on people's names, it's more common to use surnames so it can be difficult to tell the gender of the person it's named after. Although, there are some full names used too, mostly male. There is a Ficus mariae, likely named after someone called Maria. But outright women's names are fairly rare. There was a F. florenciana and F. katherinae which are only synonyms now, but there are towns called Florence and Katherine. You don't know for sure which way the thinking went for those.

By the way, there is no such thing as Ficus alii and never has been, otherwise it would have been listed as at least a synonym.

Robin98, just in case you would also like the dull truth, as well as Al's entertaining flights of fancy, Oxalis was named for the Greek word for 'sour' and Ficus benjamina for its name in Hindi.

The girls' name Ficus are cultivars, not species, so the producer can name them as s/he wishes.

Btw, what is the name of FLF variegated version there? I try to search using it's generic name and only found few related to that plant.

Guys, I do know how names are arrived at (did latin, got the science degree etc) : that wasn't my question

tropicbreezent seems to have gotten my point: using outright women's names is fairly rare (especially for trees rather than flowering plants), and I idly wondered if there was a backstory

floral - sometimes truth is stranger than fiction but evidently not in this case...

gudang - I have not heard of a variegated FLF, sounds interesting

Try Ficus lyrata "Ivonne" (again, the girls names...)

Yeah, ivonne. Just curious about this one. I bought it few days ago and try to find some info about it and what i got only 2008 posts. Since it's also beautiful, i wonder why it's not everywhere by now.

Plants with showy flowers definitely attract more female cultivar names. But what about a "chicken and egg" question. Was Iris named after the flower, or was the flower named after her?

They were both named after a rainbow. As was that bit in your eye.

There's also Rose, Lily, Violet...

These names have become popular again here lately.

Gudang, I haven't seen any recent references to it either, I wonder what happened. You could try starting a new post with that as the heading, see if anyone responds.

Yeah, maybe this ivonne too hard to keep alive. Here in tropic i never see her in ground also. Maybe i'll make new post later.

Gudang,

Where did you find that beauty? I have been searching for one for forever. Do you still have it? Would you be willing to sell it?

Let me know!

- Paislea