There are those who regard nomenclatural matters as mattes of right and wrong: in their view, there is only one right way to do things. I don’t look at it that way at all. I’ve been thinking a lot about winter aconites lately, and these seemingly simple little flowers offer some examples of just how opinion comes to influence nomenclature. In the heading for this post I’ve deliberately used the provocative, benignly provocative I hope, combination Eranthis hyemalis ‘Guinea Gold’. Those of you who know your winter aconites know that ‘Guinea Gold’ was raised in the early twentieth century and presented to the gardening public as a hybrid between what were then known as Eranthis hyemalis and E. cilicica. I believe it was Bowles who coined the name tubergenii for the hybrid group. Until recently, the usual citation of the name would have been Eranthis x tubergenii ‘Guinea Gold’. Some modern botanists regard Eranthis hyemalis and E. cilicica as conspecific. In that view, ‘Guinea Gold’ is not a hybrid – at any rate, not an interspecific hybrid. That allows it to be cited as Eranthis hyemalis ‘Guinea Gold’: both parents of this cultivar are of the species Eranthis hyemalis. There is another formula one encounters: Eranthis hyemalis Tubergenii Group ‘Guinea Gold’. I’m not sure what to make of this combination: I assume it is tacit recognition of the existence of more than one ‘Guinea Gold’. In this view, if I’ve got it right, although the original ‘Guinea Gold’ was a clone, this combination of names recognizes that not only does more than one plant now go around under the name ‘Guinea Gold’, but also that the true, original plant is seemingly lost in the crowd. Some people throw up their hands in the face of such complexities. I relish them as a way of attaining more finely nuanced expressions of the relationships involved. Is one right and the others wrong? I don’t think so. Like everything else in science, the scientific basis of nomenclature is an if…then proposition. If you believe that Eranthis hyemalis and E. cilicica are discrete species, you write Eranthis x tubergenii ‘Guinea Gold’. If you believe E. hyemails and E. cilicica are conspecific, you write Eranthis hyemalis ‘Guinea Gold’. If you believe the plants going around under the name ‘Guinea Gold’ cannot with certainty be attributed to the original clone, then you write Eranthis Tubergenii Group ‘Guinea Gold’ or even Eranthis hyemalis Tubergenii Group ‘Guinea Gold’. But is one of these right and the others wrong? Get out the boxing gloves! There’s more. I’ve also spent some time bugging some very tolerant friends and experts about the gender of this word Eranthis. It’s been traditionally treated as feminine, although some troublesome entries in the Flora Europaea suggested that some at least were treating it as masculine (or were very careless in their typing). Why the uncertainty? In short, because the etymology of the word is uncertain. It looks like Greek, but search the lexica as you will, there is apparently no word –anthis. Salisbury, the author of the genus, complicated things by using a specific epithet, hyemalis, which can be either masculine or feminine. Remember the discussion we had in the past about the gender of the genus Acis? Same author, same problem: as far as I know, Salisbury’s intentions remain unknown. It was not Salisbury who determined the gender of these genera but rather subsequent users – and they by default. All of this gives me new appreciation of the simplicity of “winter aconite”. Jim McKenney jimmckenney@jimmckenney.com Montgomery County, Maryland, USA, 39.03871º North, 77.09829º West, USDA zone 7, where Lilium hansonii and Cardiocrinum cordatum are up. My Virtual Maryland Garden http://www.jimmckenney.com/ BLOG! http://mcwort.blogspot.com/ Webmaster Potomac Valley Chapter, NARGS Editor PVC Bulletin http://www.pvcnargs.org/ Webmaster Potomac Lily Society http://www.potomaclilysociety.org/