Names
This plant's genus name Liquidambar was first given by Linnaeus in 1753 from liquidus, fluid, and the Arabic ambar, amber, in allusion to the fragrant terebinthine juice or gum which exudes from the tree. Its specific epithet styraciflua is an old generic name meaning flowing with styrax (a plant resin). The names "storax" and "styrax" have long been confusingly applied to the aromatic gum or resin of this species, that of L. orientalis of Turkey, and to the resin better known as benzoin resin from various tropical trees in the genus Styrax.
The common name "sweet gum" refers to the species' "sweetish gum", contrasting with the black gum (Nyssa sylvatica), only distantly related, with which the sweet gum overlaps broadly in range. The species is also known as the "red gum", for its reddish bark.
Read more about this topic: Liquidambar Styraciflua
Famous quotes containing the word names:
“I introduced her to Elena, and in that life-quickening atmosphere of a big railway station where everything is something trembling on the brink of something else, thus to be clutched and cherished, the exchange of a few words was enough to enable two totally dissimilar women to start calling each other by their pet names the very next time they met.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)
“If marriages were made by putting all the men’s names into one sack and the women’s names into another, and having them taken out by a blindfolded child like lottery numbers, there would be just as high a percentage of happy marriages as we have here in England.... If you can tell me of any trustworthy method of selecting a wife, I shall be happy to make use of it.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“No, no! I don’t, I don’t want to know your name. You don’t have a name, and I don’t have a name, either. No names here. Not one name.”
—Bernardo Bertolucci (b. 1940)