Plants are the worst, IMHO. But the convoluted nature of their naming is complicated for the same reason that guns are: We've been dealing with this technology for 400 years. Some old names stick and we try and shoe-horn them into the modern world and then work around the old definitions.lants are the worst, IMHO. But the convoluted nature of their naming is complicated for the same reason that guns are: We've been dealing with this technology for 400 years. Some old names stick and we try and shoe-horn them into the modern world and then work around the old definitions.
A pistol being an "auto" is a good example. We went from wheelguns to semi-auto so just saying 'auto' made sense. Then we start introducing machine pistols into the mix (which haven't ever really been common) and the term no longer makes sense, so we invent "machine pistols" to describe them because they're like "machine guns". Machine guns, of course, being much more prominent than machine pistols, what with having evolved much earlier, or at least accepted en mass much earlier than machine pistols. Rifles, unlike pistols, had full-auto variants in much wider use earlier than machine pistols. The semi-automatic stuff came after the full-auto stuff with rifles. So an automatic rifle means a fully-automatic while an automatic pistol means a semi-automatic pistol. It's only when you introduce the "machine" adjective do you really, concretely, indicate what you're talking about. But, among common people that know the language "automatic" will generally get you where you want to go with either one. An automatic M-16 is full-auto and an automatic Colt .45 is semi-automatic. And the "auto" is import there in the latter example because "Colt 45" could be talking about a 1911, an old revolver, or a ghetto beer sold in 40oz bottles.A pistol being an "auto" is a good example. We went from wheelguns to semi-auto so just saying 'auto' made sense. Then we start introducing machine pistols into the mix (which haven't ever really been common) and the term no longer makes sense, so we invent "machine pistols" to describe them because they're like "machine guns". Machine guns, of course, being much more prominent than machine pistols, what with having evolved much earlier, or at least accepted en mass much earlier than machine pistols. Rifles, unlike pistols, had full-auto variants in much wider use earlier than machine pistols. The semi-automatic stuff came after the full-auto stuff with rifles. So an automatic rifle means a fully-automatic while an automatic pistol means a semi-automatic pistol. It's only when you introduce the "machine" adjective do you really, concretely, indicate what you're talking about. But, among common people that know the language "automatic" will generally get you where you want to go with either one. An automatic M-16 is full-auto and an automatic Colt .45 is semi-automatic. And the "auto" is import there in the latter example because "Colt 45" could be talking about a 1911, an old revolver, or a ghetto beer sold in 40oz bottles.
Over in the plant world you have Impatien which is generally meant to be Impatiens wallerinna, the shade loving kind. But, there's also Impatiens hawkeri, otherwise called a "New Guinea Impatien" that looks totally different on the leaves, tolerates more sun, but produces the same flower. They're basically the "same" in that they're in the same genus. That's an easy one to figure out. But then you've got Calibrachoa (genus name used for a specific species), which some people call Million Bells, or an Arbor Vitae which is sometimes refered to as Thuga after its genus name. Then there's Dracena which could refer to either an indoor houseplant that kinda looks like a tree or what we would generally call a "spike" which is just a large grass, and then you drop Cordlyine (aka False Dracena) into the mix and now you've got people calling something by its WRONG genus name, even though the damned thing looks like it should be in the Dracena genus, but at least they're putting "false" in front of it but the matter is further confused because Cordyline differs from Dracena individuous (spike) by color in that Cordyline is red but Dracena individuous is green, except for once in every 200 or so plants, which we generally let the planter people hoard so they can make special "red spike" planters. Then customers ask somebody on the floor for a red spike plant and they show them False Dracena, which isn't horrible, or they ask on the radio, and we explain that spikes sometimes come out red, but it's not the same plant at all because the one they were looking at was basically a mutant and won't do the same thing a Cordyline/False Dracena will.
Confusing, isn't it?
The big difference between how we run our little plant world and how the news runs its world is that we require employees to ask the freaking experts before they tell people what we don't have. They ask for Thuga and we'll tell the employee that's an Arb, aisle 5 in the nursery. They'll get it.
Why news agencies can't do this is beyond me. "Hey, they said the shooter had a 40mm Glock Service Revolver, does that make sense?" Should be a question that they could bubble up to somebody that had any clue about firearms. But they don't, and that tells me something about the journalism industry. Accuracy doesn't matter. They're just squirting out words.
