Zur Poetik der Pflanzennamen in der Botanik: Carl von Linné

Abstract

Abstract The aim of the following paper is to highlight the poetics of plant names in non-literary texts, namely in the writings of Carl Linnaeus. The first part of the article presents an overview of research on the question of whether plant names have (semantic) meaning. It details the systematics of botanical and vernacular nomenclature and interrogates the relationship between plant names and proper names. The following two parts are devoted to the founder of modern botany, Carl Linnaeus, whose lasting importance lies in systematizing existing plant names as well as establishing a code of rules for future nomenclature. By analyzing a scene in which a plant is (re)named as well as some of the naming rules in his Philosophia botanica (1751), the paper shows that the Swedish nomenclator botanicus already took the poetic dimensions of plant names into account.