The Vetti-Ver Stays Rooted

The father of modern taxonomy, Carl Linnaeus (1707-78), is said to have relied on the Hortus to classify the plants of the Orient. What is interesting is that for want of better names, Malayalam words in the local dialect—the same ones supplied by Itty Achuthan—was Latinised and adopted for botanical nomenclature. Says K.S. Manilal, “This was the first printed book of the plant wealth of tropical countries. It was a time before the exact botanical names were decided and so colloquial names were used in Hortus. Many of these plants were not known to the Europeans and they did not fit into existing classifications either...so they had to redo the entire system.” Botanists says there are over two dozen such species names. For instance, another Malayalam name for the cooling ramacham is vetti-ver (cut roots) which has been Latinised to Vetiveria indica and likewise Cerbera odallam (Malayalam: odallam), Catunaregam spinosa (kattunarakam), Benkara malabarica (venkara), Basella alba (basela) etc.