STYLISTIC STATUS AND LEXICOGRAPHIC FIXATION OF COLLOQUIAL PLANT NAMES

Plant names (phytonyms) constitute a special lexical group. They were described in Russian explanatory dictionaries as a subsection of special vocabulary, a class of nomenclature, with the emphasis on the natural-science encyclopedic component. As a result, this lexical group in dictionaries is unreasonably reduced, and the interpretations turn out to be not informative. Some obsolete, regional, ambiguous names have been removed from the thematic group. Modern colloquial names of plants are not refl ected in dictionaries, and the current stylistic stratifi cation is ignored. In modern explanatory dictionaries only isolated cases can be found (geranium ‘the colloquial name of pelargonium’). Thus, the group of phytonyms in dictionaries has to be suffi ciently updated.