While reading Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer, I noticed that at one point she erroneously called a Greek-derived activity a Latin one. It then occurred to me that Latin names are for taxonomy, but Greek is used for an organism's traits, as in "photophilic" for a characteristic of plants that must have direct sunlight. How/why did this come about?

Partially a remnant of everybody doing serious writing in Latin. Taxonomy and the ISV (Internation Scientific Vocabulary) seems evenly devided between Greek and Latin. Cf. Homo sapiens but also Australopithicus africanus. Also Latin-derived terms like [lateral[/i], dorsal, and ventral, &c.

Addendum: the ISV also kind of replaces Latin as the main scientific language by providing terms in other languages that are easily recognizable.

OK, thanks. I'm still unsure why there was a division of terms between the languages of description and function, but you've given me more of an answer than I've been able to find on my own.