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Help[Facts] Re: Russian origin for Yesenia?
in reply to a message by clevelandkentevans
You'd also need to find out where Karsten got the Genus name. Unlike the earlier and thus current name Oenocarpus, Jessenia has no Graeco-Latin meaning - it would seem to have been chosen in honor of someone known to Karsten. Besides, these palms have common names throughout Latin America - they seem not to be known as Jessenia except in certain scientific literature.
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Well Karl Jessen was a well-known botanist, too, and he has the official shorthand Jess. in botanical names, therefore he wasn't just an acquaintance of H. Karsten. But the major argument is still true: The palm have trivial names, but none of them is known popularly as "Jessenia" or "Yessenia". So probably the name was just made up by Yolanda Vargas Dulche maybe inspired by botany, I don't know the graphic novel nor any statements of the author where she got the name from.
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the Danish surname Jessen is probably the origin, although there's also at least one town named Jessen in Germany. There is a botanist Karl Friedrich Wilhelm Jessen (1821-1889) who describes a number of species in Deutschlands Graser und Getreidearten 1863. Gustav Karl Wilhelm Hermann Karsten (4 years older than Jessen) describes the palm as Jessenia in 1857 in the journal Linnaea; Ein Journal für die Botanik in ihrem ganzen Umfange. Jessen published 45 names to Karstens 701
This message was edited 2/18/2020, 2:04 PM
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