Although linguists have called it a dead language, Latin still gets a lot of use these days, at least among gardeners and especially among the growing crop of baby-boomer gardeners. Not so long ago, people grew plain old bee balm and coneflowers. Now they brag about their
Monarda and
Echinacea. I won't be surprised if someone asks me whether I've planted my
Solanum tuberosums (potato) yet.
So what gives? I mean, has gardening gotten to the point where we need Latin to communicate effectively, or are these purveyors of proper plant pronunciation driven purely by pretension? The answer to both questions is yes--we do sometimes need Latin to communicate in the language of plants--and no--not all the time. Many of the Latin fanatics are striving to be snooty, but sometimes gardeners simply want to know with greater certainty which plants are which. That comes down to speaking Latin.
Gardeners can get by with common names, which are so full of imagery that I'd be the last to suggest we do without them. After all, what would gardening be like without hens-and-chicks or love-in-a-puff or rose-of-Sharon, common names for some fairly common plants. Common names can cause a great deal of confusion too: depending on where you live, rose-of-Sharon might be a foot-tall groundcover or a large, summer-blooming shrub. If you were to order rose-of Sharon from a catalog without seeing a pretty picture, you might wind up with more--or less--than you bargained for.
Thankfully, the Latin used by botanists contains a limited, highly specialized vocabulary. For instance, plant names usually consist of two words--the Genus name, a noun, and the species name, an adjective. Both names are descriptive, and they can tell you a great deal about a plant. In fact, from the name alone, you can sometimes form a mental image of the plant even if you've never seen it.
For example, there's Acer palmatum, the Japanese maple. Acer is the Latin name for maple, and palmatum, referring to the distinctive shape of its leaves, means resembling a hand. There's Magnolia grandiflora. Its generic name honors a 17th-century horticulturist named Pierre Magnol, and the species name, grandiflora , is Latin for large flowers, although it might just as well have been termed grandifolius, which means large leaves.
In many cases, the Latin name actually tells you something about a plant's origins: africanus, californicus, arabicus or israeliensis. Or it might tell you something about its peculiarities: noctiflorus if it blooms only at night or hircinus if it smells like a goat. If a plant is likely to remain small, it may be termed compactus. If it shoots straight into the air, it may be columnaris. Those and other Latin names can be rather simple to decipher. I mean, if a plant name includes the term admirabilis or elegantissimus, chances are you'll be pleased with how it looks. Not so if it's known as horridus.
And sometimes it's apparent that the botanists who assign Latin names to plants are just out to have a little fun, as in the case of Scotch thistle, a plant which, when ingested by donkeys, causes extreme gastric disturbances. As a result, the Latin name for Scotch thistle is Onopordum, which means donkey flatulence. I need a break. I'm kind of depressed because just a moment ago someone walked up to me and said, "Videris humilior seniorque coram," which means, "You look shorter and older in person."
