CRC World Dictionary of Grasses

Communication is both a complex matter and a universal phenomenon. A sender, a receiver, and the information to be transferred form the essential elements. Communication takes place between humans, between animals, and between plants, but also between humans and animals, as well as between animals and plants. The information to be transformed takes many forms — visual, acoustic, olfactory, and tactile. In science, communication takes place as a rule in rather condensed forms, often visual as a written text; information may even be still more condensed as in a mathematical formula, in bar codes, or in digitized images. In theory, communication in the sciences should be precise and unequivocal, but in real life many ambiguities exist, some of them by coincidence and some deliberately introduced and the source of much confusion. A large number of dictionaries have been published to try to clarify scientific terminology and to ease communication. Within the natural sciences, the large field of biodiversity uses scientific names for communication, not bar codes or digitized images. The International Codes of Botanical and Zoological Nomenclature set the rules for the use of scientific plant and animal names, resulting in their universal and unequivocal application. Since scientific names cannot by their nature be abbreviated, every specialist has to be aware of an extremely large number of them, many difficult to memorize. Therefore, it is most helpful to know and understand the background of the respective scientific name — its etymology, its history, the name of the person who first coined it, the circumstances of its origin. There is always a time axis in this: scientific names have been formed over centuries; some are ancient, some recent, and this is often not evident to the uninitiated.