Revisiting the explanatory dictionary entries for plant names

The lexicographic description of phytonyms (plant names) has become a pressing issue due to the inadequate, conflicting, and outdated information found in current explanatory dictionaries. The traditional scientific approach employed by lexicographers of the past seems questionable, as the standard template definitions (such as “herbaceous plants in the Asteraceae family”) are often uninformative and sometimes inaccurate or incorrect in terms of the natural science paradigm. Limiting the description of plant names to solely scientific nomenclature has resulted in the exclusion of outdated, alternative, colloquial and other names from explanatory dictionaries, leading to the artificially limited and stylistically neutralized representation of plant vocabulary. An examination of contemporary resources, particularly corpus data, indicates that explanatory dictionaries should aim to reflect the common rather than the specialized usage of plant names. Hence, plant names constitute a large and heterogeneous group of words connected through intricate semantic relationships, with one plant potentially possessing multiple names that vary diachronically, stylistically, and functionally, while one name may be applied to various plants. Consequently, the lexicographic description of plant names should be based on linguistic principles.