Botanists are set to vote at Madrid’s International Botanical Congress on renaming plant species that contain racial slurs and other such offensive names, Nature reported Tuesday.
The International Botanical Congress, which meets every six to seven years to weigh on rules for naming plants, fungi and algae, will vote on two proposals revolving around culturally sensitive designations, the weekly scientific journal reported. (RELATED: Workers Discover Cannabis Grow Outside Wisconsin’s Capitol Building: REPORT)
Plant scientists are set to decide on whether to rid their field of offensive names https://t.co/pl9AHNBSkU
— nature (@Nature) July 16, 2024
One proposal aims to remove all species names based on the word “caffra” and its derivatives — which are ethnic slurs against southern African blacks — and substitute the word “afr” and other derivatives in their place, according to Nature. This proposal would affect some 218 species. The second proposal would establish a committee to deal with offensive names. The amendments would require a supermajority of 60 percent of attendees approving it in order to pass.
The proposals have their opponents. “It’s very unfortunate that many of these names are offensive,” Alina Freire-Fierro, a Technical University of Cotopaxi botanist, told the journal. “To change the names that have already been published would cause so much confusion.”
“There is resistance against these proposals, the fear of throwing plant nomenclature into chaos,” said Gideon Smith, a plant taxonomist at Nelson Mandela University (NMU) in South Africa and one of those behind the “caffra” proposal, according to Nature. “I cannot think of any simpler way to get rid of this racial slur.”
Species named after colonial figures like Cecil Rhodes, a colonial official, and George Hibbert, a slave trader, have also come under fire, Nature noted. “There should be a way of dealing with cases like Hibbert,” Kevin Thiele, an Australia National University plant taxonomist, told the journal. Thiele emphasized that the renaming of species should only be limited to “sufficiently egregious” historical figures.
Lennard Gillman, a former New Zealand evolutionary biogeographer and consultant, told Nature that future congresses should consider whether existing plant names should be replaced by the names used by indigenous peoples. “Change often happens incrementally,” Gillman said.
