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Article: A tree by any other name .... (tree classification)
- Article from:
- American Forests
- Article date:
- November 1, 1993
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1993 American Forests. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Read this story carefully. If you're still in the woods about identifying, naming, and pronouncing tree names, please don't call the editors of this magazine.
"If I had wanted to memorize so many names, I would have become a botanist."
Enrico Fermi
The Nobel prize-winning physicist was expressing his dismay at the ever-growing list of names--quarks, neutrinos, leptons, gluons, bosons, etc.--for the ever-smaller particles of matter that he and his colleagues were discovering. But in a roundabout way he was also commenting on the rigors of plant nomenclature. The history of tree names is a fascinating but dizzying account of frustration and confusion.
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