Botanists agree to loosen Latin’s grip
Adrian Higgins, Washington Post:
For at least 400 years, botanists across the globe have relied on Latin as their lingua franca, but the ardor has cooled. Scientists say plants will keep their double-barreled Latin names, but they have decided to drop the requirement that new species be described in the classical language. Instead, they have agreed to allow botanists to use English (other languages need not apply). In their scientific papers, they can still describe a newly found species of plant — or algae or fungi — in Latin if they wish, but most probably won’t.
What exactly is being eliminated here? Apparently botanists had to publish a prose description of the species in Latin. And since most botanists don’t know Latin, they have to get help from scientist-translators to write these descriptions. Whole thing seems kinda nuts.