To “enter” the concordance, click on the letter below that is the first letter of the Latin word you are interested in. Then scroll down the file you are taken to until you reach the word you are looking for. For example, if you want to look up the word flos, click on the letter F below, and after the F file has opened, scroll down to flos.

This concordance contains all the botanical Latin words used by Linnaeus in his species diagnoses in volumes 1 and 2 of Species Plantarum (1753).
   The main entries in this concordance, words in bold face and flush with the left margin, are those found in Latin dictionaries. The various forms of those words that were used by Linnaeus are indented and in “regular” face. Following each form is a description of that form (e.g., case, number, and gender for adjectives) and then reference(s) to the location(s) in Species Plantarum.
   Some adjectives modify more than one noun in a diagnosis. If those nouns differ in gender, the gender of the adjective gives both possibilities in brackets; for example, [masculine/feminine].
   Some species names (long-term goal: all) are links to translations of the Linnaean diagnosis of that species. The species names below are the those used by Linnaeus.

This project can be a starting point for a variety of research opportunities. One may choose to study Linnaeus’s use of Latin by adding to this concordance words from other Linnaean works, written before and/or after Species Plantarum. Another opportunity is to focus on the evolution of botanical terminology by examining a subset of Linnean words or a particular group of Plants covered in Species Plantarum.

Thank you to Tom Hayward, lecturer emeritus in Classical and Medieval Studies at Bates College (Lewiston, Maine), Patricia Eckel of the Missouri Botanical Garden, and Ian Andrews of the Botanical Latin Facebook Group for their help when I found myself struggling with a grammatical issue or translation. In the end, however, I accept responsibility for any errors in this concordance or in the associated translations (unless I can find some way to blame them on someone else).
   Other sources that I have found valuable are Stern’s Botanical Latin, Wheelock’s Latin, the Oxford Latin Dictionary, Order out of Chaos by Charlie Jarvis, and Categorical Glossary for the Flora of North America Project.

Comments and corrections are welcome and should be e-mailed to info@vfthomas.com or sent to the address at the top of this page. Thanks.