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Date Posted: 07:05:55 09/10/03 Wed
Author: Ian Hay
Subject: Re: Baobabs or Boabs?
In reply to: Didge Rowe 's message, "Re: Baobabs or Boabs?" on 00:34:16 09/04/03 Thu

Didge is correct that Boab and Baobab are "both" acceptable. The name simply depends on where you live; in exactly the same way that an apple is NOT an apple in France, where it is called "une pomme", nor is it an apple in Germany, where it is "ein apfel", nor in Spain, where it is a "mansana", and so on and so on. Thus there "can be" and there are many perfectly correct and acceptable "common" names for even such mundane objects as an apple or a baobab. And it was precisely because the same plants or fruits (e.g. a boabab, boab, an apple, pomme, mansana etc.) had so many "common names names that the Linnean binomial system was introduced in the 18th century to give greater clarity to naming living things. The Linnean system, of giving every living organism two names (a genus and a species name), allows "scientists" (and mug amateurs like us)to be a little more precise or "correct" when discussing a plant plants birds, fruit, etc., no matter what your local language or common name for something is. However, to highlight the futility of trying to be too fussy about what the "correct" name for something is, (even when you are not talking about "common" names such as boabs, baobabs, apples, pommes and mansana), we all know that the "scientific" names themselves change over time! To use a pertinent example, Linnaeus placed all apples in the genus "Pyrus" in 1754, becuase he thought that apples and pears were so alike, (abandoning the earlier classification, "Malus", for apples). (By the way I have no idea what Linneus, who was Swedish, called and apple in Swedish.) And so it was that apples were "correctly" called Pyrus species for the next 170 years. However, in 1924, Liberty Hyde Bailey, an American taxonomist, decided that apples were sufficiently different from pears that he resurrected the pre-Linnean genus, Malus, for apples and so apples are now "correctly" called Malus", leaving all the pears in the genus Pyrus, well, at least until the next taxonomist gets to work on them. Thus Boab or Baobabs, or whatever Russians and Swaheli speakers call them, are all "correctly" called Adansonia species, until some taxonomists tells us otherwise. The 'name game' has no end.

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