The scientific or Botanical name of a plant is a key that unlocks a gateway of knowledge and information about that plant. Knowing that name will let you understand what type of plant you are dealing with, what other plants it’s closely related too, and something about the plants history or physical description. That’s really quite a lot of info to pack into just a few words, and yet, sadly, this valuable resource is too often seen by gardeners  as a source of confusion and complication.

The problem of plant names.

Ever since human kind developed language we have had names for the plants around us. Very often these were highly descriptive, but also highly localised and regional.

The common wild arum (Arum maculatum), so familiar from British hedgerows, is a good case in point. Widespread across these Isles, and also the source of many myths, as well as having been pressed into use for food, starch and even soap, the plant has, over the centuries, acquired over 100 different common names .

Lords-and-Ladies and Cuckoo-Pint are some of it’s more widespread monikers, but Devon folks called the plant Dog’s-Dribble, whilst in neighbouring Somerset it was Babe-in-the-cradle and in Sussex Ram’s-Horn.

All of which meant that even close neighbours wouldn’t necessarily know which plant everyone was referring to. This is just one example, but virtually every single European plant is in much the same boat in terms of the multiplicity of their common names.

The birth of Taxonomy.

This situation was greatly compounded when plants started to be introduced into cultivation from other countries and far away lands. It became clear than an unambiguous and universal system of naming was needed so that Botanists and gardeners alike could all know to which plant they were referring.

The elegant solution to this problem was devised in the mid 18th Century by Carl von Linné, a Swede now regarded as the grand-daddy of Biological nomenclature.

Linnaeus, as he named himself, developed the Binomial System which was applied to plants in 1753 and then to animals in 1756. Under this system all plants are given a two part name with the first identifying the genus to which they belong, and the second the unique species that they represent.

Each species is also placed into an overarching classification that identifies exactly where it sits in relation to all other plants, and ultimately all other living things. This arrangement and classification of life is known as Toxomomy, and is overseen by the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature.

Botanical names.

Under the rules of Taxonomy the description and name of a plant must be published in Latin in a suitability respected Botanical journal or book. Back in Linnaeus’ day Latin was the unambiguous and pan-European language of scholarship, and it’s the adoption of this (rather than Swedish or English, say) that has secured the permanent future of his system of naming.

It’s common to refer to Botanical names as “Latin Names” but actually they are Latinised versions of words or names from many other languages, particularly Greek, so the term “Botanical Name” is both more useful and more accurate.

The meanings of names.

This is where things get really interesting from a gardeners point of view. Those Botanical names are never chosen at random and each carries useful information about the plant to which it’s attached.

The first half of each name is known as the Generic name, and identifies the limited group of close relatives (the genus) to which the plant belongs. Some random examples with handily descriptive names are:

Nothofagus – “fagus” is a Beech tree, “notho” means false, so a Nothofagus is a False Beech, i.e. a tree that resembles a Beech, but which is something different.

Aquilegia – “aquila” is an Eagle, and Aquilegia refers to the eagles-claw shape of the flower parts.

Magnolia, Fuchsia, Deutzia, Camellia & Stewartia – are all examples of commemorative names that use Latised versions of the surnames of the men associated with early the descriptions of each genus – in these cases, Magnol, Fuchs, Deutz, Kamel & Stewart.

The second half of a plant’s name is called the Specific Epithetic and identifies it’s particular and distinctive species.

These specific epithets are always usefully descriptive and cover a wide spectrum of derivations including the habit, shape and colour of a plant, it’s flowers, leaves, bark, fragrance, it’s country or region of origin, it’s season of growth or flowering, as well as various commemorative names.  Some examples:

acaulis = stemless
aestivalis = flowering in spring
alba = white
alpestris = from mountains

angustifolia = narrow-leaved
argentea = silvery
aurantiaca = orange
australis = from the south
autumnalis = of autumn
azurea = blue

Pronunciation.

Trying to figure out the correct pronunciation of Botanical Names is, without doubt, the barrier that prevents some gardeners from embracing them.

Names like Arisaema zanlanscianense may seem a tad daunting at first, but they all carry that same valuable information about the plant that they describe,

In this case “arisaema” = closely related to Arums  + “zanlanscianense” = coming from the Chinese region of Zanlan.

In fact all English speakers already use quite a few scientific names in common speech without too many problems.

Amphibian, pachyderm, and Tyrannosaurus all qualify along with familiar, but actually quite long plant household-names, like Rhododendron for instance.

There are also five simple rules that will make the decoding of Botanical pronunciation much easier:

1. “ch” (as in Chrysanthemum) is always pronounced as a hard K

2. “ae” (as in Aesculus) is always pronounced EE

3. “ii” (as in wilsonii) is always pronounced EE-EYE

4. most vowels (including “y”) are pronounced short rather than long (as in maths, ethics, fish, box, bus, and cyst)

5. the emphasis is normally placed on the second to last vowel or pair of vowels, so Clematis should be clem-AY-tiss (rather CLEM-a-tiss) and henryi is HEN-ree-eye (rather than hen-REE-eye)  for example.

Following these five rules will enable you to pronounce virtually all Botanical names correctly. When faced with a new or unfamiliar name it’s best to sound them out one syllable at a time and then just run the syllables together.

You’ll also find that new names become much more recognisable from the constituent parts that you’ve already come across.

With a little practise the whole world of plant Botanical names and the valuable and interesting information that they hold will open up to you, and your relationship with your garden and it’s floral inhabitants will be that much the richer for it.

Tags: Flowers, Garden, Gardening, Magnolia, Native Plants, Spring Flowers

This entry was posted on Friday, May 7th, 2010 at 9:00 am and is filed under Tim's Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.