While the common names of plants are often descriptive and easy to remember, you can get a lot of information from a plant’s botanical name. This might help you in deciding whether or not it’s the plant for you. And popular names can cause confusion – there are a lot of plants known by the name daisy, but the botanical name allows you to easily differentiate between lawn (Bellis perennis), Michaelmas (Symphyotrichum novi-belgii ) & ox-eye (Leucanthemum vulgare).
The system we use today was devised by Carl Linnaeus in the 18th century. It’s called the binomial system, as every plant has a minimum of 2 names. The 2 base names are based on Latin; some are actual Latin words, but many others are words from other languages or proper nouns given a Latin ending.
The 2 parts a name has to have are the genus (e.g. Bellis, a noun, always with an initial capital and in italics) and the species (e.g. perennis, an adjective, no capital letter but still in italics). Optional components include:
- variety (indicated by “var.”),
- subspecies (indicated by “subsp.”),
- cultivar (a contraction of cultivated variety, indicating a vernacular name always in inverted commas and not in italics), and
- hybrids – denoted by an x.
Let’s take an example, from the popular genus Fuchsia, named for Leonhard Fuchs, the German botanist who originally collected it in the wild. The vast majority of fuchsias are native to South America and most are tropical or subtropical. An exception is Fuchsia magellanica, which is found as far south as the southern tip of South America, occurring on Tierra del Fuego in the cool temperate zone. This is indicated by its species name “magellanica”, which means ‘of or from the area of the Magellan Straits (off the southern coasts of Chile and Argentina)’. This gives an indication that this is a hardy variety suitable for the garden rather than the conservatory.
There are many named cultivars of Fuchsia magellanica (often abbreviated to F. magellanica once it’s established that we’re talking about fuchsias), each with its own name to give further information. To take three at random:
- F. magellanica ‘Versicolor’ (which has small, grey-green leaves variably margined with cream and a pink flush when young; versicolor is Latin for variously coloured),
- F. magellanica ‘Gracilis'(which has smaller leaves and a more arching branch structure, gracilis being Latin for graceful) and
- F. magellanica ‘Gracilis Variegata’ (which has variegated leaves).
Amongst other things, a plant’s botanical name might tell you where it originally came from, what kind of habitat it likes, who originally collected it, how big it is, what types of plant it is, what colour its flowers are and when it flowers, the shape of its leaves, whether or not it’s scented and if it’s edible – although not all at once!
Let’s start with place of origin.
Some are geographical, such as the compass directions australis (southern), borealis (northern), hesperus or occidentalis (western) and orientalis(eastern).
There are many relating to specific continents or countries, such as:
Aethiopium or africanus – Africa
Baeticus or hispanicus – Spain (the Romans divided the Iberian peninsula into three provinces. Hispania Baetica approximately corresponds to modern Andalucia and was bordered to the west by Lusitania, and to the northeast by Hispania Tarraconensis.)
Barbadensis – Barbados
Brittanicus – Great Britain
Canadensis – Canada or America
Canariensis – of the Canary Islands
Capensis – the Cape of Good Hope
Chilensis – Chile
Chinensis – China
Europa – Europe
Gallicus – France (Gaul)
Helveticus – Switzerland
Japonicus – Japan
Virginiana – Virginia.
Others are more descriptive of habitat, giving a clue as to the conditions a plant will like.
Those of us with small town gardens might find it worth looking out for illecebrosus (of the shade), umbrosus (shade-loving) and urbanus (city-loving; urban) or even dendrophilus (growing on or around trees) and lucoris, sylvaticus or sylvestris (growing in woodland). Larger gardens can accommodate arvensis or campestris (growing in fields or plains).
Clay soil is likely to be a good home with species such as palustris (from marshes or wetlands), riparius (of river banks) or rivalis and rivularis (of brooks). Those with free-draining soils might look out for alpinus (alpine), ammophilus or arenarius (growing on sand), montanus (from the mountains) or saxatilis (inhabiting rocks).
And finally, for those living by the sea, names to look for include salinus (keen on salt), littoralis (of the seashore) and marinus or maritimus (growing by the sea).