There are new regulations in place as of 2012 which allow new species to be described in the vernacular. Since Latin-death, like climate change, tends to accelerate rather than slow down, this could mean the whole edifice will come crashing down. That said, I suspect a lot of this is aimed at speeding up the process of describing fungi; and Latin is very firmly established in the world of fungi, because most mushrooms don’t even have common names. A friend was telling me about the Audubon Guide to mushrooms – Audubon requires that common names be included – so the writer just made them up, on the spot, by the hundreds, for all those with unfindable “common names.”
Anyway, we’ll see what happens. “English is the new Latin,” as the bishops say, so maybe we’ll be talking about “scientific English” and “Botanical English” soon.
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