Misnomer

You may have heard that the American Ornithological Society has decided to change the common names of birds that are named for people, as in Cooper's hawk, acknowledging all the things that are wrong with that way of naming natural creatures.

Among others, I think about the same problem with plants, and if anything, it's worse since there's no central way to change the common names of plants. To add it, there are also overtly racist and other bad common names of plants, not just ones named after people.

The botanical names of plants are controlled centrally, through the International Plant Names Index, and those are also rife with people's — mostly European men's — names, though they are Latinized. So far, there has been no awareness of that in botany, as far as I know. (The botanical names of plants are changed all the time lately, it seems, but never for this reason.)

I bring this up today because someone sent me a reminder about the name of poinsettias. It comes from a man named Joel Poinsett, a 19th century American amateur botanist who was ambassador to Mexico, where the plant is from. More importantly, it had a name before he ever saw it near present-day Mexico City. 

The plant still has that name: Its name is Cuetlaxochitl, pronounced Kwetla・so-cheetl.

Back in his home state of South Carolina, Poinsett ran a forced labor camp, and he oversaw the Trail of Tears removal of Indigenous people from the southern states to Oklahoma while he was Secretary of War under Martin Van Buren.

I know which name I would prefer to call the plant, and it's not the one that honors an enslaver who stumbled across it. I don't know whether Poinsett named it after himself or if others did it after he sent the samples back, but it doesn't matter.

Cuetlaxochitl, pronounced Kwetla・so-cheetl.

 

19th century botanical illustration of the plant by Francisco Manuel Blanco.