Liverworts’ name persists from medieval Doctrine of Signatures logic.

Evidence

“Wort” is the old Anglo-Saxon word for plant. The medieval Doctrine of Signatures proposed that all plants had some use to humans and would give us a sign to reveal that use: any resemblance between a human organ and the plant would suggest it as a remedy. The leaves of liverworts are generally three-lobed, as is the human liver. There is no evidence that liverworts made effective cures, but the name has persisted for seven centuries. — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Gathering Moss, 288

Categorization

• XREF: Pairs with the chapter-5 moss-name claim: naming persists from cultural history, here a seven-century medicinal folklore, not botany. — connects to: Organisms sometimes retain reproductive structures that have lost all function — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural…, 367
• ADDENDUM: Relevant to the immodesty/complaints work only loosely, but the Doctrine of Signatures is a strong example of folk classification of plants by resemblance that could serve the trees article’s worldbuilding of how humans read plants.