Re: Origins of the name "Dionaea"

From: Richard L. Wagner (Dick@rmy.emory.edu)
Date: Thu Nov 04 1999 - 14:06:45 PST 

Date: Thu, 04 Nov 1999 17:06:45 -0500
From: "Richard L. Wagner" <Dick@rmy.emory.edu>
To: cp@opus.hpl.hp.com
Message-Id: <aabcdefg3705$foo@default>
Subject: Re: Origins of the name "Dionaea"

> Muscipula derives from "mus" and "capio". Mus means "mouse" and capio
> means "I capture", so the plant is in fact Venus's Mousetrap, not, I
> say again, not flytrap (which would have to be written in Latin as
> "muscaria"). John Ellis attempted to popularise the plant as Venus's
> Mousetrap although he personally published both Venus's Fly Trap and
> Venus's Mouse Trap as "trivial" names before anyone else did, but for
> reasons we no longer know this name never became popular, so we are
> stuck with the name flytrap.

Does this mean that the common housefly, Musca domestica was also named
after the mouse?

Dick Wagner

This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Tue Jan 02 2001 - 17:32:07 PST