63As mentioned earlier, Solega plant naming conventions are at odds with one of
Berlin ’s nomenclatural universals, namely that the vast majority of ‘folk generic ’
names should be ‘primary names’. Solega plant name s require an obligatory super-
ordinate category label ( mara ‘tree’, ambu ‘vine’ and so on), and therefore do not
behave like the ‘folk generic’ names predicted by Berlin’s framework. Nevertheless,
plant names such as kakke mara and poṭle ambu are indeed the ‘folk generics ’ of the
Solega ethnobotanical classifi cation scheme, as they are the names people use in
everyday situations to talk about the plants in their environment. A further claim
made by Berlin, which will be investigated further here, is that there is usually a
one-to-one correspondence between a folk generic and a scientifi c genus, and that
this pattern is most evident among the names of fl owering plants.
3.5.1 Plant Groupings in Solega
A number of Solega plant categories contain one or more subordinate members
whose names bear some resemblance to the superordinate category label. Such
groupings resemble the ‘ polytypic genera ’ described by Berlin , and exemplifi ed by
taxa such as oak (genus Quercus ) > white oak ( Quercus alba ) , chestnut oak ( Quercus
prinus ), etc. A key feature of the oak example is the close relationship between the
English folk taxa and corresponding botanical genus and species. Similar polytypic
name complexes exist in Solega, but there is considerable variation in the way in
which the members of such a complex map onto a scientifi c genus. Table 3.1 shows
how some polytypic genera behave in accordance with Berlin’s predictions (full
match). Many Solega taxa map onto species of more than one Linnaean genus, and
conversely, there are numerous instances where the species of a polytypic scientifi c
genus are labelled by completely different, often monotypic Solega folk generic
names. As an example of the former situation, the Solega plants a:le, beppa:le and
komba:le (the latter two being analysable as types of a:le ) correspond to not a single
polytypic Linnaean genus, but to three genera, namely Tylophora , Holarrhena and
Wrightia (and hence, show no match). An example of the latter situation is Bauhinia
purpurea and Bauhinia racemosa being labelled by the completely unrelated Solega
names kancuva:ḷa and kitta:rsã respectively (again, no match).
A simple quantitative analysis of the names in the above table shows that the num-
ber of groups of either nomenclatural system, which show absolutely no correspon-
dence to the other nomenclatural system, far exceeds those that match fully. Figure 3.1
shows that almost two-thirds (63 %) of polytypic Solega ethnotaxa show no corre-
spondence with Linnaean groupings, while the members of over half of the polytypic
Linnaean generic groupings are labelled by completely unrelated Solega names.
Even if the values for ‘partial match’ were to be combined with ‘full match’, the
total number of groups in the resulting category would only equal those in ‘no
match’. In other words, it would only be appropriate to conclude that groupings of
Solega taxa can sometimes coincide with the groupings found among Linnaean spe-
cies. The data presented here do not support the notion of any systematic regularity
between Linnaean genera and folk genera.
3.5 Solega Ethnospecies and Scientifi c Classifi cation