Comment by fellowniusmonk
Comment by fellowniusmonk 2 days ago
The naming of yaupon really ticks me off, of all the things that should get a scientific rename it's yaupon, clearly it was a successful marketing effort by the Empire, er, by the British to knock out a delicious and ubiquitous competitor.
I can see the guy now as the realization that this native plant could undermine the British East India tea trade if people came to enjoy yaupon tea. It probably didn't take any convincing to get him to assign such an uninviting name to the plant and in doing so, save one of the British Empire's main trade items.
It was definitely a chickenshit move on his part though.