Global botanists have made a historic decision to change the names of plants that may be considered offensive.
Future plant names will also keep clear of anything that might be racially offensive or linked to slave trading.
In a 351 to 205 vote, scientists at the International Botanical Congress in Madrid decided that plants such as the coast coral tree would be formally called Erythrina affra, instead of Erythrina caffra.
Caffra is considered a racial slur used against black people and others mostly in southern Africa.
The vote will reportedly lead to the renaming of more than 200 plants, fungi and algae species.
Nature reported that scientists attending the Botanical Congress Nomenclature Section of the conference voted to create a special committee to deal with the ethics of names for newly described species.
The names are usually determined by the scientists who first describe them in the scientific literature, but that protocol can now be rejected if the names are considered derogatory to a group of people.
Alina Freire-Fierro, a botanist at the Technical University of Cotopaxi in Latacunga, Ecuador, welcomed the “caffra” amendment because of the offence it caused.
However, she told Nature this could open the door for other similar changes.
“This could potentially cause a lot of confusion and problems to users in many fields aside from botany,” she said.
The full report is on the Nature website.
