With spring just around the corner, soon everyone will be
buying plants for their
landscapes and gardens. But if you don’t know the plant’s
botanical name, you may wind up
buying the wrong plant.

The common names we most often call plants can cause
confusion. Sometimes two or more
plants share the same name. Or one plant may be known by
many names, depending on local
and family traditions.

You can now get a beautiful yaupon holly, for instance,
that has yellow berries. But if
you want the yellow-berry form, you have to ask for it
specifically.

Another classic example is European water lily, which has
more than 300 common names in
many languages. It’s the same plant everywhere. But it has a
confusing array of common
names.

In the “International Code of Botanical Nomenclature,”
though, the plant has
only one name.

Knowing the botanical name when you go to buy a plant
cuts through all the confusion.
Each form of each plant has just one botanical name,
wherever you are in the world.

The two-name botanical code was developed in the 1700s.
Each plant is given a first and
last name, based in Latin, that’s unique to each species.

Learning these Latin names doesn’t mean learning every
plant in the world, though. But
it helps to know how they’re named.

Botanical families share traits such as foliage and
flower form. Members of the carrot
family, for instance, bear flowers in umbrella-like clusters
and have oil glands in the
foliage. The family includes carrot, Queen Anne’s lace,
parsley, coriander, cumin, celery
and parsnip.

These plants’ botanical first names are a little like
people’s last names: they
identify groups of plants with even more similar
characteristics.

The first name of a botanical binomial is the genus name.
The genus and species names
are always either underlined or in italics. Within the rose
family for example, are Prunus
(the group of plants we commonly call stone fruits),
Malus (apples and crabapples),
Rubus (bramble-type berries) and Rosa (the
garden roses).

The second name is the species name. This narrows down
the identity to a specific
species.

For example, the common name maple refers to a genus of
plants known botanically as Acer.
The sugar maple is a species of Acer known
botanically as saccharum.

So the botanical name for sugar maple is Acer
saccharum. No matter what the
common names in Germany, France, Russia or China, Acer
saccharum is the plant we
call sugar maple in the United States.

Sometimes unique growing conditions produce a variant
from a species that then
reproduces itself.

For instance, peach (Prunus persica) trees produce
a fruit with fuzzy skin. At
some point, though, this species produced a few offspring
trees whose fruit had smooth
skin. Botanists call this a “variety” of the normal
species.

This smooth-skinned peach is commonly called a nectarine.
But botanically, it’s known
as Prunus persica variety nucipersica. “Variety” is
often abbreviated as
“v.”

Often new variations of horticultural species are
produced by cultivation techniques,
hybridization or even encouragement of mutations. These are
called cultivars, or
cultivated varieties.

For example, the botanical name for a “Patio” tomato is
Lycopersicon
esculentum ‘Patio.’

It seems a bit daunting to pronounce these names. But at
least know how to find a
reference to them. If you admire a plant you just have to
have for your garden, knowing
the botanical name is the only sure way to find it in the
marketplace.