Name Please
By Mark Kane
Every gardener at one time struggles with learning plant names in Latin. The words and spellings are exotic, hard to remember and worrisome to say out loud. Take Liriope. Is it le riye’ o pea or lear’ ee ope? Or Stewartii? (stew--art-ee-eye). Why the double “i?”
J.C. Raulston, professor of horticulture at North Carolinia State University, once expressed his sympathy for the embarrassment that many of us feel as we flounder with botanical Latin. And he offered a solution, “If you you’re not sure how to pronounce a name, just say it loud.”
J.C. was the father of the Arboretum at NCSU, which he started with no funds and a small group of dedicated local gardeners and students, among them Edith Eddleman and Doug Ruhren. The Triangle area of North Carolina (Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill) is a center of gardening thanks largely to the inspiration of J.C., who died in mid-career, leaving a legacy of new plants for North Carolina and students who went on to become garden designers, educators and nurserymen.
Then there’s the puzzle of the binomial--two Latin words that together make a unique name for every plant. For example, Clematis durandii. The first indicates genus, the second species. There are also sub-species (usually regional variants of the species) and cultivars, variants of the species that are adopted and propagated by nurserymen and gardeners because of their superior garden qualities, such as vigor, shape, color, bloom, and variegation.
The Morton Arboretum has a full introduction to the naming system here.
These days the nursery trade adds another way to name the plants in commerce, mainly as a sales tool, so we now have plants with four names: genus, species, cultivar (usually chosen to add information about the plant) and the trademark name (chosen for sales impact). Here’s an example from Tony Avent of Plant Delights Nursery in North Carolina (Tony was a student of J.C. Raulston’s and is known for his plant talks and the breadth of his catalog).
“Loropetalum chinensis 'Hines Purple Leaf' ...is marketed under at least two different trademark names, Plum Delight, and Pizzaz.” The trademark news tell you little about the plant except that it’s showy, at least in the eyes of the nursery trade.
Meanwhile, the genus, species and cultivar names do give you an idea about the plant--it’s a lorapetalum (an evergreen, broad-leaved shrub), the species is chinensis (native to China) and it’s purple-leaved. That beats ‘Pizzaz.’
Tony’s full article is here. It will help you skirt the pitfalls of trademark names and come to value the precision of naming by genus, species and cultivar. It won’t help you pronounce or spell Chaemacyparis (false cypress), so just say it loud.
- Categories // : Garden Stories, June 2010
Comments (3)
Those of us who don't speak Latin (it is a dead language, non?) are grateful for the advice. Armed with the species/genus/cultivar, where can we look up information on where the plant will thrive?
When you have the accurate name (that is, genus and species) you learn where the plant will thrive from a good reference book such as Sunset Western Garden book, or the AHS Encyclopedia. Or you Google the name. Almost always, a Google search with the botanical name will lead you to a good Wikipedia article and several introductions to the plant in the online catalogs of reputable nurseries. You're also likely to see descriptions at the sites of plant societies that are devoted to the genus of your plant. In short, there's a lot of information close at hand, once you have the plant name.