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A taxon can have a common name, a scientific name, or (more commonly) both.
By convention in this guide, the common name is entirely lowercase, even if it includes a proper name, e.g. “california poppy”.
The same common name can occasionally be used by multiple taxons, in which case you may need to check the scientific name to disambiguate. One frequent reason for this is that the common name for a prevalent subspecies or variant gets applied to the species as a whole (or vice versa). But the same common name can also be used for completely unrelated taxons.
Some taxons list one or more alternative common names. I often list the iNaturalist common name as an alternative when I’ve chosen a different common name for the BAWG.
This guide capitalizes and italicizes scientific names in the usual manner.
Only one scientific name is listed at the top of the taxon page, usually corresponding to the name used on iNaturalist. If there are alternative names, they are listed in the section for more info sources.