One of the biggest frustrations for many beginning gardeners are these darn funny plant names.  "Why can't we just call these things something simple, anyway?" , or  "Who do they think they are, using those highfalutin three dollar words?" people ask, but when it gets down to it,  these latinized names are the very language of gardening and without these names we wouldn't have any basis for a common understanding.

A little background on botanical nomenclature:

 Taxonomy is the science of naming things -- living things -- and the naming of plants conforms to a recognized standard for categorization just like with animals.  This categorization follows what is called a "dichotomous key", where living things are grouped according to similarity from the most basic to most specific, whittled down step by step until one arrives with a unique entity ,  or species.  Each step of the way, we ask "is it this, or is it this?" , and group plants according to certain features they have in common.

Kings Play Chess on Friday Generally Speaking

A little mnemonic I learned ago helped me remember the various categories of classification, as Kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus and species (notice the first letters of each word) are the names for these classification.  At the level of kingdom all that is asked is whether something is plant or animal,  etc,  and by the time we reach species (think of the word specific), we study in great detail the arrangement of petals, pistils, stamen and ovaries.  Along the way, though, we might ask whether or not a plant flowers or whether it has grassy or broad foliage just like we ask in animals whether it has a shell or backbone or is cold or warm blooded.

About that latin

 For sake of consistency, the scientific names for plants and animals are written in latin -- not that the Romans called them these names, really, but more like a writing that *looks* latin. In many cases, a person's name or the region in which a plant was discovered is simply tweaked until it looks latin enough.  Some of these names look daunting, and the pronunciation is always an adventure, but they are just words -- important words in that they provide the only way to really identify a plant, but just words nonetheless.

Common names

  Even with this system for plant naming, we have a much less formal system we use, and in many cases these common names suffice up to a certain point. If I refer to a snapdragon, for instance, most people have a general picture of what I am talking about.  In many cases, though, these common names only lead to a certain confusion.  If somebody in Southern California is conversing with another gardener in Wisconsin and they are discussing mock orange, they may each think the other one is nuts, since the Californian is likely talking about an evergreen shrub (Pittosporum), while the Wisconsinite is talking about a deciduous (Philadelphus). You see, in many, many cases, two or more plants have the same common name, and it is impossible to distinguish without knowing the botanical.

  Oddly enough, the "common" name for many plants is often more obscure than the botanical, and  if you were to speak of Siberian bugloss, you might draw more blank stares than if you referred to it as Brunnera.  Also, just as there are often more than one plant with the same common name, one plant can often have several, thus adding to the general confusion.  The beauty of using botanical nomenclature when used properly is that there is just one -- just one Brunnera macrophylla, with Brunnera being the genus and macrophylla the species.

Genus and species

 We often refer to plants by their genus only, and in many cases the genus and the common name coincide.  Delphiniums and Coreopsis and Geranium are genera (plural of genus), and each has many different species within that genus.  Each individual species is distinct from one another, forming stable breeding populations, so Coreopsis verticillata is distinct from Coreopsis lanceolata is distinct from Coreopsis grandiflora.  All coreopsis are fairly similar to one another, but knowing the species helps identify the plant with more exactness than just the genus.

What about varieties?

 If gardeners just stuck to growing plants just as they come from the wild, knowing the genus and species would be enough to identify a plant, but gardeners throughout time have selected certain characteristics they find desirable and even though the species is the same, each plant is different from the next. Coreopsis verticillata "Moonbeam" is a light yellow, while Coreopsis verticillata "Zagreb" is bright yellow.  A bit like Beagles and Poodles being recognizable, but both of the same species.  Each of these names reflects the genus (coreopsis), species (verticillata) and variety (moonbeam) and the full name reflects a unique plant.
 

   Confusing? Yes, it can be very confusing -- especially at first.  If there were one point I could make, though, is that when gardeners use botanical names, they aren't doing so to lord their knowledge over the world or to be snobs or to impress or to otherwise intimidate -- they are using them simply because *those are their names*, and more importantly, the only names by which they are recognized universally.  No more, no less. Gardening, as any other endeavor, involves a certain amount of learning, and the botanical nomenclature is central to that learning.  Just as it helps to know Italian if one goes to Italy, it helps understand gardening if one learns the language of plant names.