Words are strange sometimes. . .
Jun. 21st, 2005 03:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
xiphiasSo, I was looking up information about gerbera daisies, and a site stated that they were "endemic to South Africa."
This sounded, to me, like someone didn't know what "endemic" meant.
But I was wrong. "Endemic" was precisely the word they meant to use. See, I knew that a disease was "endemic" if it was always present in a population. And I'd only ever encountered the word in epidemiology. But it turns out that it also means, in botany and zoology, "exclusively native". See, the difference between "native" and "endemic" is that a plant or animal can be native to more than one place. But a plant or animal that is native to exactly one place is "endemic" to that place.
Neat, hunh?
This sounded, to me, like someone didn't know what "endemic" meant.
But I was wrong. "Endemic" was precisely the word they meant to use. See, I knew that a disease was "endemic" if it was always present in a population. And I'd only ever encountered the word in epidemiology. But it turns out that it also means, in botany and zoology, "exclusively native". See, the difference between "native" and "endemic" is that a plant or animal can be native to more than one place. But a plant or animal that is native to exactly one place is "endemic" to that place.
Neat, hunh?