Naming Consistency for Forest Plants in Some Rural Communities of Northeast Thailand

Abstract

Consistency of naming forest plants was subjected to a field test in a rural community of Northeastern Thailand. Local experts supplied names for a set of trees and vines in a surveyed plot. Results showed a high level of agreement among the informants for more than half of the plants and less than 10% of the plants were not named consistently by the majority of informants. Disagreement on names largely took the form of non-responses or degrees of specificity. In general, vines and immature understory plants produced the greatest diversity of opinion. Of the names collected, 53% were recorded in standard botanical references but about half were linked with more than one Latin binomial, often in different families. Many false links could be quickly resolved if voucher specimens of the plants were compared with herbarium specimens.