Destroying Angel is a great, creepy name. There are so many names that I left out of my guide to nature names for babies cartoon because they didn’t fit. Here are a few:
- Question Mark, Comma, and White M (butterflies)
- Stinky Squid (a stinkhorn fungus)
- Peppered Rock Tripe (a lichen)
- Paradoxical Frog (a frog, yes, but it’s smaller as an adult than as a tadpole… PARADOX!)
Weird common names are relatively easy to dig up, because there are so many of them. According to the great book Wild Urban Plants of the Northeast, for example, the humble greenbriar is also known as catbrier, bullbrier, hellfetter and… blasphemy vine. Poor thing.
There are far fewer weird scientific names (the two-word latin names that signify genus and species), but they’re out there, like Han solo the trilobite and Dracorex hogwartsia the dinosaur.
I’ve had so much fun wading through the strange names we’ve given the other beings on our planet. What are some of your favorites?
