3.2 Cognition of Plant Words 

     Plants originally don’t have the names. Their names are summed up in human survival environments by human who use their five sense organs to observe plants’ figures, listen to their voices, smell their scents, taste their flavors and touch their surfaces (Chen Hui, 2012: 11).

 People can communicate with those plant words only if they are endowed with names. We always want to use a name to call one plant or a kind of plants when we mention them. The scientific name of plant is a universal name, which is named after Latin. The local name is formed in people’s life. Compared with the scientific names, people prefer to use the local names of plants, because people are familiar with the local names of plants. And the local names are easy to communicate and remember in people’s daily life. 

 The origin of the plant words come from many aspects.

 First, it is named according to the plants’ figures, colors and features. Gladiolus’s Chinese name is “Tang Chang Pu”. It is also called “Jian Lan”. In the eyes of ancient Romans, the flower spikes and leaf shape are similar with the sword in gladiator’s hand. So it is called gladiolus