Fork it - July 2011
Furca Perforate or for the non-latin readers Fork It – The language may be dead but the plants are alive!
Many moons ago I studied Latin for half of my degree. This didn’t seem strange at university – indeed there were some even odder coves who did Ancient Greek as well – but it has usually occasioned surprise when subsequently revealed. To the perplexed “Why Latin?” I usually respond “Why not?” Aft
er all, not only does it enable you to read some of the best literature of western civilization in the original idiom, it also gives you a head start on all the Romantic languages and is an important underpinning of English. It is also invaluable to gardeners, as all plants have a Latin name.
In fact they have two Latin names – the so-called “binomial” system devised by the Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus in the 18th century. Before that, plants had descriptive names running to several Latin words, so this was a definite improvement. Linnaeus classified plants according to similar characteristics, particularly with regard to their reproductive organs. In his system, the first word denoted the genus to which the plant belongs - e.g. Quercus is an oak. The second word is the epithet, or adjective, so in the case of Quercus alba, the alba means white in Latin and this tree’s common name is the American white oak. Beware however, as the translation of the epithet may not necessarily give you the common name – e.g. one would expect Quercus nigra to be a black oak, but it is in fact called a water oak!
Sometimes the epithet does not describe the plant but gives you some other useful information. One of the most common epithets is officinalis. This comes from the Latin officina which was a general name for a shop or any house where things were sold. It came to be associated with apothecaries’ shops – the forerunners of our pharmacies – and so any plant described as officinalis has been used for medicinal purposes.
The two Latin names are always written in italics and together they give you the name of the species. Within species you can then have sub species, which will be a naturally-occurring variant. So the Portuguese laurel with variegated leaves is called Prunus lusitanica subsp variegata. The species can also split into a variety or form (written “var” and “f”) the first denoting a slight difference in botanical structure and the latter a small variant such as colour. An example is Kalmia angustifolia f. rubra, which means a Kalmia with narrow (angusta) leaves (folia) and red (rubra) flowers.
The cultivars are the next rung down in the hierarchy (i.e. cultivated varieties, which have been specifically bred) and these are written with a single quotation mark around them, e.g. Phlox paniculata ‘Windsor’. To confuse matters even more there are also sexual crosses between different genera (neuter plural of genus, remember declensions from school?) or species which are known as hybrids and these will have an “x” in their name e.g. Viburnum x bodnantensis ‘Dawn’.
To cap it all there are over-arching families to which groups of genera belong and these names usually end in “aceae”. The family Rosaceae, for example, is huge and encompasses not only roses, but also cherry trees and laurel etc.
Of course, plants will always have their common names which can vary from place to place. In one of my open garden competitions, no one could name Achillea ptarmica ‘The Pearl’, until one old lady said to me “Oh we’ve always called that Bobby Button!”
