May, 2024
When Tigers Got Their Spots
Any number of modern scientific (Latin) names for plants and animals include the adjective tigrinus. Many of these organisms have spots, blotches, or similar markings that are definitely not stripes. In fact, modern compendia of "botanical Latin" (e.g, P. M. Eckel, A Grammatical Dictionary of Botanical Latin, 2010-2023) give meanings such as "tiger-like, marked like a tiger, i.e. spotted like a jaguar (Felis onca), the American 'tiger' or, less often, barred like the Asiatic tiger (Felis tigris) (Stearn); barred as the grain in wood."
One might suppose that the application of tiger or tigrinus to such things as "tiger lilies" (the name Lilium tigrinum seems to have been used first in 1809) or the spotted Cattleya described in 1848 as Cattleya tigrina originated with people who had never seen an actual tiger.
However, the idea that an adjective relating to tigers could be applied generally to things with spots, blotches, or similar markings can be traced back at least as early as the 18th Century, with the French adjective tigré and the taxonomic usage of tigrinus. But between Classical Latin and the 18th Century, there is a gap that we have not been able to span with citations of the adjective tigrinus from Latin documents.
Possibly unique among the modern languages frequently used by taxonomists, French happens to have an adjective tigré that means, literally, something like "made to resemble a tiger", "tigerized", or simply "resembling a tiger". As a result, species descriptions in French have a special potential to inform us about how some taxonomists understood tigrinus. One might even posit that the French understanding of tigré, which from its earliest usage has referred to things that are spotted, blotched, or otherwise marked, colored their understanding of what the Latin tigrinus ought to mean. In fact, among the early orchid species descriptions involving "tiger" names, the only languages encountered other than Latin are French and English.
However, in some parts of Latin America, the Jaguar (Panthera onca) is also known in Spanish as "el tigre", tigre, or tigre americano, in part because that is how 16th Century Spanish authors referred to it, apparently because of its markings (echoing Medieval developments to be discussed below), and not knowing its indigenous name. There does not seem to be a term in Spanish equivalent to French tigré, and the Spanish idioms involving tigre seem to refer to its fierce disposition rather than colors or patterns.
Classical Latin usage: Did tigers have spots?
Some citations illustrating the usage of tigrinus and the appearance of tigers:
Statius (d. 96 CE), Thebaid, liber 2: Qualis ubi audito venantum murmure tigris Horruit in Maculas. (As when, hearing the rustling of its prey, the tiger shivers in its spots.) (While the translation “shivers in its spots” makes good rhetoric, then as now, all this passage really tells us about the definition of macula is that it could be applied to tigers. It does not tell us that the adjective tigrinus, "of or pertaining to tigers", means "spotted". Maculatus simply means marked in some way, as opposed to being "unmarked", immaculatus.)
Pliny the Elder (d. 79 CE), Naturalis Historia, liber 8, c. 23:
Panthera et tigris macularum varietate prope solae bestiarum spectantur, ceteris unus ac suus cuique generi color est.
(Bostock & Riley translation, 1855) The panther and the tiger are nearly the only animals that are remarkable for a skin distinguished by the variety of its spots; whereas others have them of a single colour, appropriate to each species.
(Perhaps following the text more closely: The panther and tiger are almost the only animals distinguished by their various markings, while the others are of a single color, each according to its type.)
Using "species" this way in an English translation carries anachronistic implications of the (relatively) new science of taxonomy, when applied to Roman texts!
Bostock & Riley in this context cite a passage in Naturalis Historia, liber 13, c. 30, regarding wooden furniture, "tables of tiger and panther pattern":
Mensis praecipua dos in venam crispis vel in vertices parvos. illud oblongo evenit discursu ideoque tigrinum appellatur, hoc intorto et ideo tales pantherinae vocantur. sunt et undatim crispae, maiore gratia, si pavonum caudae oculos imitentur.
(Bostock & Riley translation, 1855) The principal merit of these tables is to have veins arranged in waving lines, or else forming spirals like so many little whirlpools. In the former arrangement the lines run in an oblong direction, for which reason these are called "tiger" tables; while in the latter the marks are circling and spiral, and hence they are styled "panther" tables. There are some tables also with wavy, undulating marks, and which are more particularly esteemed if these resemble the eyes on a peacock's tail.
(Or, again trying to remain closer to the original text: The most esteemed tables show the wood grain in wavy lines or in little swirls, the former running lengthwise, known as "tigrinae" (tiger grain), the other contorted and known as "pantherinae" (leopard grain), and there are also some with wavy, curly grain, even more prized if they resemble the "eyes" of the peacock’s tail.)
(Note the distinction, and the implication of a constrast, between "tiger" and "leopard" grain here! Tigers had stripes, leopards had spots (or swirls)! But, as in the first citation from Pliny, these were regarded as "markings", opposed to a uniform coloration.)
While there are many Roman mosaics depicting tigers (identifiable to us by their stripes), as well as some identified today as "leopards" or "panthers" (with leopard spots), we don’t actually know which figures in the Roman art that has come down to us were known to the Romans themselves as tigris, panthera, or perhaps something else. Mosaics, frescos, etc. generally don’t come with contemporary labels! Reasoning that the animals the Romans called tigris always had stripes, based on unlabeled images, may be a case of circular logic.
Nevertheless, the distinction implicit in the citation from Statius, marked versus unmarked fur, could give rise to the idea that tiger fur is "marked" (maculatus), and that, by extension, tigrinus could mean "resembling" a tiger by virtue of having (generic, unspecified) markings. Tigrinus seems to have come into French as tigré, and at least to later taxonomists, apparently carried with it the implication of indefinite markings, not just stripes. However, the evidence from Pliny, distinguishing and contrasting tigrinus and pantherinus (i.e., characterized by stripes versus the whorls we usually call spots when they appear on leopards, jaguars, and other wild cats) suggests that the concepts of stripes and spots were indeed separate in Roman times, and perhaps only later became conflated to give rise to the concept embodied in the French adjective tigré.
That tigers had stripes in ancient times is also implied by the Greek ἱππότιγρις, "tiger horse", apparently referring to the zebra! But no one seems to have located a clear reference to a zebra in Classical Latin, or indeed in Ancient Greek, to prove the point.
Medieval Fantasies
Is there any evidence in Medieval Latin for tigrinus meaning "spotted"? We found a modern opinion on the internet that tigrinus, in the indefinite past, referred to "everything that is striped, speckled, or spotted yellow and black or brown", but is that simply a modern generalization of how tigrinus has been used by post-medieval naturalists? Where are the medieval citations?
Literature more or less about tigers in the Middle Ages seems to come almost exclusively from bestiaries, a sort of medieval equivalent of today’s bizarre conspiracy theories. Somehow, the tiger became associated with an absurd story. In brief, people for some unspecified reason wanted to steal tiger cubs (Pliny also mentions this, but not the absurdities that come next in the medieval story). Today it is French bulldog puppies that are stolen. Someone discovered that the pursuing tigress, seeking to recover her cubs, could be distracted by a mirror (or in some versions, a glass ball), and, seeing her reflection, thought it was one of her cubs, and so she would stop as if to rescue the cub, before realizing her mistake. In some versions, the tigress falls for this trick repeatedly. As a result of this medieval fake news story, there are a large number of illustrations in the medieval bestiaries, easily identifiable as images supposed to be tigers by the inclusion of the mirror or glass ball (usually depicted as a circular object with a rim of some sort), if not by labels or their placement in the manuscript. These illustrations almost never give the animal stripes! Instead, almost all of them are either spotted or, less often, unmarked, and a few have wings. At least one example has hooves. Thus, in this sort of literature, medieval tigers had spots.
The bestiary web site, produced by David Badke of Victoria, British Columbia, has compiled citations for the animals of the bestiaries and their documentary sources as far back as Lucian and Pliny. By the time of Gaius Julius Solinus (3rd Century), tigers still had stripes, and, apparently, there was at that time a thriving industry of stealing tiger cubs. Claudian (4th Century) explains that tiger cubs, in his time still striped, were captured as pets for the amusement of the Persian king. Around the same era, St. Ambrose gives the version with the glass ball, and from that point forward, there seems to be little interest in the appearance of tigers, other than that they are sometimes said to have unspecified markings. An English version of a bestiary by Bartholomeus Anglicus (13th Century) was published in London in an English translation by Stephan Batman in 1582: here the tiger is "spotted with divers specks", and is yet again distracted by mirrors.
In spite of the bestiaries, there are historical mentions of tigers and other large animals presented as gifts to various European kings, suggesting that at least a few people were not distracted by the fabulous popular stories and had first-hand knowledge of the big cats. But, if the pervasive illustrations of tigers in the bestiaries are any indication, the ordinary understanding of what a tiger looked like was apparently extremely vague and did not include stripes! As for tigrinus, the adjective, we were not able to find any medieval citations at all, apart from copies of Pliny. The visual concept of the tiger had apparently become so indistinct that it was no longer a suitable point of comparison; the adjective no longer served a purpose.
So far, nothing that has come to our attention appears to contradict the conclusion that the use of the adjective tigrinus in the sense of "spotted or mottled" (i.e., applicable to things that are marked in some way other than striped) is a post-medieval development, certainly not part of Classical Latin usage, and apparently not attested in medieval times.
Post-medieval developments
The Renaissance saw a flurry of activity in the publication of dictionaries, in which it is possible to trace some of the evolution of modern European languages.
Jean Nicot, Thresor de la langue francoyse, tant ancienne que moderne (1606) p. 629, in the entry for the noun tigre: "Tables mouchetées et tavelées ou grivelées comme sont les tigres, Mensae tigrinae." (Why does the example concern tables? This seems to be another allusion to Pliny, and perhaps also a French preoccupation with stylish furniture.) No such usage is noted in Robert Estienne’s Dictionnaire françois-latin (1539), but the identical citation about tables is found in his 1549 edition (on Google Books). In Estienne’s 1543 Dictionarium seu latinæ linguæ thesaurus, the same citation from Pliny appears under a separate entry for tigrinus, but the text is slightly different: "Mensis præcipua dos in vena crispis, vel in vertice variis. Illud oblongo euenit discursu, ideóque tigrinæ appellantur." Here, tigrinus, as it was understood to have been used in the distant past by Pliny, seems on the verge of being transferred into French.
Grand dictionnaire de l’Académie Françoise (1696), entry for tigre, tigresse, still does not cite an adjective as such, but uses the words moucheté or mouchetez and tavelez to describe the concept. In the same volume: Taveler: moucheter, tacheter, "il ne se dit guere qu’en parlant de certains animaux dont la peau est naturellement tacheté". Tacheter: marqueter de diverses taches. "Il se dit proprement des taches qui sont sur la peau des hommes & de certains animaux". Among the definitions of Tache, "se dit aussi de certaines marques naturelles qui paroissent sur la peau". However, this edition lacks a suitable definition of moucheter. In other sources of the same period (Pierre Richelet, Dictionnaire françois, contenant generalement tous les mots, 1693), Moucheter: "C’est marquer de plusieurs petites taches noires un fond blanc" — the general sense is a random dark speckling, as if covered by flies (mouches).
The first example of tigré, the adjective, in a French dictionary seems to be Nouveau dictionnaire de l’Académie françoise, 1718: Tigré: "moucheté comme un tigre".
By 1835, Pierre-Claude Boiste, Dictionnaire universel de la langue française, Tigré, "moucheté comme un tigre, comme un léopard, une once" (in modern French, once is the snow leopard, but the same or a similar word has been applied to the lynx and other felines), and as a verb: Tigrer, "moucheter, rayer comme le léopard, le tigre". (In modern French, rayé means striped, even though that sense of rayé seems not to be included in the 1835 dictionary.) Also the flower tigridie (Latin tigridia), "tigrine, plante iridée, à belles fleurs horaires, jaunes-brunes, tachetées de noir, tripétales". Moucheté: "tacheté, comme couvert de mouches" (as if covered with flies). Tacheter: "Marquer de plusieurs taches".
Thus, by 1835, it is clear that French tigré has come to mean both spotted and striped, but the extension of moucheté (originally linked to flies and hence to spots, specks, or generally, to small dark marks) to include specifically both spots and stripes (in the entry for tigré) seems not to have been noted in earlier dictionaries.
In summary, Latin tigrinus is attested in Roman times with reference to the striped grain of wood, but apparently not in the sense of other markings such as spots, speckles, etc. However, the text from Pliny, if not quoted completely, could easily give rise to the idea that "tiger" wood grain could include markings other than just stripes. Much later, in the 16th Century and beyond, French tigre became associated not only with the animal, the tiger, but also with things that were marked in some vague, imprecise way “like a tiger”. By the 18th Century, the first example of the French adjective tigré makes it essentially equivalent to moucheté (covered with flies!), but in the manner of a tiger, as if tigers themselves were spotted or speckled, as they had commonly been depicted in the medieval bestiaries! The usage of adjectives derived from tiger by this time is not the same as their usage in Classical Latin.
And it is in the 18th Century that Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778) invented what became the modern system of naming plants and animals, taxonomy. Linnaeus wrote mainly in Latin, and sometimes in Swedish, and is said never to have learned much of other languages. However, he was held in high regard throughout Europe, and so his ideas and writings were spread widely in French, English, German, Italian, etc. Linnaeus himself described some species with epithets that refer to the tiger: Cypraea tigris (Linnaeus, 1758), the Tiger Cowry, a mollusc whose shell has spots, not stripes, although in this case Linnaeus does not provide a separate description of the pattern on the shell that alludes to tigers. Another is a clam, Venus (now Codakia) tigerina (Linnaeus, 1758), often misspelled as tigrina, the description referring to concentric "stripes" or ridges on the shell. Linnaeus also described the tiger as Felis (now Panthera) tigris (1758), noting corpore maculis omnibus virgatis – with the body marked all over with stripes (virgatus: striped).
There are a number of species with the specific epithet spelled tigerin- rather than tigrin-, and in at least one case (Rana tigerina, now Hoplobatrachus tigerinus, Daudin, 1802, the Indian Bullfrog), the original publication also gives a vernacular (French) translation of the name, in this case Grenouille Tigrée, demonstrating that tigerina is simply a variant spelling. In this example, the description in the taxonomically-required Latin as well as the equivalent French tells us something about the use of the adjective: "maculis atro-fuscis tigerinis artubus insuper", and "d’un brun rougeâtre tigré de taches noirâtres en dessus; ces taches tigrées sont entourées d’une teinte jaunâtre dessus les membres et les flancs..." – here, tigerinus and tigré refer to irregular blotches or spots, not stripes.
So it was that the tiger, or the idea of the tiger, acquired spots or blotches in medieval times, and this popular misperception also passed into French about the same time modern taxonomy was invented, with the result that a number of plants and animals bearing spots but lacking stripes came be named after the tiger.
Examples of "Tigrinus" Orchid Species
Thelymitra tigrina Robert Brown 1810: Latin only, "perianthio patulo maculato".
Oncidium tigrinum Juan José Martinez Lexarza 1825: Latin only, "Flores tres, quinque, magni, alterni, specioci, pellem tigrinam referentes... Perigonium regulare patens, sementis quinque lanceolato-ovatis lutescentibus, maculis tigrinis castaneo purpureis tota superficie variegatis... Labellum maximum luteum, immaculatum..." This one actually has stripes or bars, not just spots.
Stanhopea tigrina James Bateman ex Lind. 1838 Latin and English, sepals ... "marked with irregular longitudinal blotches... which approach or run into each other at the origin of the sepals." Petals ... "marked at their base with transverse bands..."
Cattleya tigrina Achilles Richard 1848: French only (no Latin description, perhaps one reason why some considered this an invalid taxonomic name). Text calls the plant "CATTLEYA TIGRINA (Cattleya à fleurs tigrées)". Some modern articles call it the "Tiger Striped Cattleya", being unaware that tigrina and tigrée need not refer to stripes! The next oldest name for the same plant is Cattleya leopoldii, whose publication also appears somewhat irregular.
The taxonomic history of Cattleya tigrina in marvelously convoluted. Dr. Jack Fowlie discussed the problem in his 1977 monograph, The Brazilian Bifoliate Cattleyas and Their Color Varieties (Day Printing Corp., Pomona, CA), p. 95. Fowlie eventually located the first description of the plant as Cattleya tigrina, noting that there was no Latin description, normally a requirement for "valid publication", but his principal reason for not advocating this name in lieu of the currently popular C. leopoldii and the only slightly less popular C. guttata was that it had already taken decades for orchid growers to begin to understand that guttata and leopoldii were separate, distinct species, after a long period where a veritable parade of esteemed orchid botanists had lumped them into guttata, with the result that numerous hybrids had already been made with both forms under the latter name. Fowlie considered the difficulties that would ensue in orchid horticulture (as well as the obscurity of the journal where the species had been published — the Portefeuille des horticulteurs was then exceedlingly rare, but today easily found on the web site of the Biodiversity Heritage Library), and judged that such a change would be "unwieldy and argumentative".
The concern about how taxonomy impinged upon the practical requirements of horticulture was still a strong consideration over a decade later, when Carl Withner (The Cattleyas and Their Relatives. Volume I: The Cattleyas, Timber Press, Portland, OR, especially pp. 67-68), after enumerating the differences between guttata and leopoldii, thought that the original color plate of tigrina most closely resembled the original description of guttata, mentioning that Braem thought tigrina (again, from the original color plate) was closer to leopoldii. Withner goes on to explain why the name makes sense, pointing out that "the South American tigre, or jaguar, is a completely black-spotted, not striped, fierce feline"! — in other words, he missed the story of how the tiger got its spots, and how the jaguar came to be seen by early Spanish chroniclers in South America as tiger-like instead of leopard-like. In any case, it was only much later that orchid taxonomists were no longer sensitive to the way their pronouncements would affect the wider community of orchid horticulture: the intended audience for the work of taxonomists has changed since the 1980's.
The two species concepts, guttata and leopoldii, might have remained distinct were it not for a series of ambiguous statements. After the description by Achilles Richard (lacking, as we have seen, the required Latin diagnosis), the next mention of what eventually became established as leopoldii was by John Lindley in Paxton's Flower Garden 2:129 (1852) as a horticultural form, Cattleya Leopoldii Hort., but without an "official" description, the name having been bestowed by Alexandre Verschaffelt, the grower who first flowered it in Europe about 1850. The required botanical description followed, authored by Charles Lemaire, first in a brief note without the required Latin in 1854 (L'Illustration horticole, Tome I, Miscellanées, p. 68), and then with the formal description in 1855 (L'Illustration horticole, Tome II, t. 69), in both cases referring to it as Cattleya Leopoldii Hort. Versch. However, Fowlie reports, Lemaire, in the "fine print", also refers to it as "C. guttata var. Leopoldii" — but in context, what that passage, in the French text, actually says (our translation of the French) is that "It is very close to C. granulosa and C. guttata, but it seems to us sufficiently different to regard it as distinct. Nevertheless, one might strictly speaking ("à la rigueur") consider it a form of the latter, but a form infinitely more developed and quite superior in beauty." Here Lemaire uses the conditional tense, expressing a hypothetical taxonomic alternative that the most fastidious taxonomist might adopt, but clearly expressing his opinion and decision that specific rank is the best solution. In French, "à la rigueur" refers to a view that is fastidious in the extreme, an outside possibility.
Meanwhile, Linden's nursery in Brussels had acquired a large shipment of plants from Brazil, including, as mentioned in 1860 (Jean Jules Linden, with the collaboration of Jules-Emile Planchon, Heinrich Gustav Reichenbach, and G. Lüddemann, Pescatorea: iconographie des orchidées, plate 43, text on p. [55]), a plant illustrated as "Cattleya guttata var. Leopoldii Linden & Rchb.f.". Reichenbach had apparently misconstrued Lindley's original description of guttata as applying also to his leopoldii plant that had been described by Lemaire, and the conflation that seems to stem from Lemaire's "fine print" was now firmly established. As Fowlie observed, Lindley had seen both plants alive, but he died before he had an opportunity to reiterate his view that they were properly distinct.
Orchid experts such as Robert Allen Rolfe and Alfred Cogniaux again made the case that the two forms were distinct in the 1890's, but the pendulum later swung back in favor of combining them. We would have to wait until about the 1970's before the growers again became aware of the differences, even though much later, in 1988, Withner observed that the Royal Horticultural Society was still treating them as a single species, guttata, for purposes of hybrid registrations. That change was eventually made (2002, long after most growers had understood that two different species were involved), but a few years later, the RHS, following a decision by the World Monocots Checklist (now superseded by the World Checklist of Vascular Plants), recognized C. tigrina as the correct name, having priority over C. leopoldii, with the publication of the orchid hybrid registrations for April-June, 2006 (Published in Orchid Review 114, Number 1271, September-October, 2006), and referring to Braem, Guido J. (1984) Die bifoliaten Cattleyen Brasiliens (Brücke-Verlag Kurt Schmersow, Hildesheim, Germany) 1:74-79 for discussion and synonymy — in other words, acceptance of Braem's views on the names of this species did not come about until almost 20 years after he had suggested the change. By that time, 2006, the confusion caused by the long-standing decision to combine guttata and leopoldii for purposes of registration had been largely untangled, and the change to tigrina was no longer considered prohibitively "unwieldy and argumentative".
Houlletia tigrina Linden ex Lindl. 1853: Latin and English, pattern only mentioned in the English description, tepals "richly mottled and variegated with deep rose", and on the lip, "cross bands of blood-red", but no direct explanation of why the specific epithet was chosen.
Cymbidium tigrinum Charles Samuel Pollock Parish ex Hooker 1864: Latin and English: Spot-lipped Cymbidium, "labello longe unguiculato trilobo albo purpureo-maculato", and the English description notes that the mid-lobe of the lip is "barred transversely with short streaks of dark purple", which in the accompanying plate are widely spaced oval spots, not forming distinct bars.
Trichocentrum tigrinum Jean Jules Linden & H. G. Reichenbach filius, 1869: Other than the fact that the flowers are "coloured like those of Cattleya Aclandiae", there is nothing in the description alluding to tigers.
Mormodes tigrina João Barbosa Rodrigues 1877: Latin and French, the only reference perhaps alluding to tigers is in the French, "perianthe jaune-sale, très-finement moucheté de brun-pourpre".
Catasetum tigrinum H. G. Reichenbach filius 1881: Latin and English, the only reference alluding to tigers is in the English, "white sepals and petals, the last unusually broad, all with numerous cinnamon-colored bars", which in photographs are a mixture of spots and short transverse bars scattered over a pale background.
Cytropodium tigrinum Linden 1881: No description as originally published, apart from the fact that it had been collected along the Rio Branco; this was merely a name on a list of plants recently introduced into commerce by the Linden nursery. While the name is usually considered a junior synonym of Cyrtopodium punctuatum, a recent publication speculates that it could be an as-yet-undescribed species.
Dendrobium tigrinum Rolfe ex Hemsl. 1891: Latin and English, the only allusion to tigers is "sepals and petals very undulate in their basal half, where they are also spotted and somewhat veined with dark purple". Now considered a synonym of Dendrobium spectabile, which is very definitely adorned by various stripes, bars, and spots.
Epidendrum tigrinum Martín Sessé & José Mariano Moziño 1894: Latin only, sometimes considered an illegitimate name, "Petala oblonga, crasiuscula, reflexa, intus purpureo punctata...", no other explanation for the specific epithet. Now referred to Epidendrum cristatum (Ruiz & Pavón, 1798).
Maxillaria tigrina Charles Schweinfurth 1968, the flower is actually striped: Latin and English, "flos pro planta magnus, conspicue striatus".
Post-script: A Thought Experiment
The invention of the moveable-type printing press around 1440 unleashed astounding changes in the way information was spread and used. What might have happened if that invention had included Artificial Intelligence?
The first step in deploying Artificial Intelligence in the year 1440 would be to train it, by feeding it all of the assembled knowledge found in the best libraries. It would learn the classics, both Greek and Roman, and the vast corpus of manuscripts dutifully copied by over a thousand years of scribling monks as well as secular clerks. In particular, it would absorb all of the bestiaries.
Then, when someone Googled "tigris", the Artificial Intelligence engine of the printing press would produce an essay about the tiger, printed on fine paper with the latest moveable type, describing an animal with indistinct spots and sometimes wings, easily distracted by mirrors.
It has been many decades since we were first introduced to computers. The earliest definition we heard was, "The computer is nothing but a high-speed idiot". This was followed, maybe a decade later, by the maxim, "Garbage in, garbage out". For computers to generate anything of value, the input must have value as well. Before Artificial Intelligence can have something meaningful or even helpful to say on the subject of tigers, for example, first-hand information and analysis about tigers is required, originally produced and compiled by humans. The thousand-year attempt to assemble knowledge about tigers based on copying and recopying faulty descriptions was a failure, for lack of evidence-based inquiry. Then as now, even with Artificial Intelligence, the maxim holds: Garbage in, garbage out.