A Gardener's Latin
I count it as one of the achievements of my high school career that I avoided taking Latin. However, now that I have become an enthusiastic, if inexpert gardener, I may find it a hollow victory.
When buying bellflowers at a nursery, I am besieged by questions. Do I want a campanula carpatica? Campanula glomerata? Campanula persificifolia? Or perhaps a Campanula lactiflora?
I may have to learn a little Latin in self-defense or I may never end up with the flowers I want in my garden. Besides, its expensive to be forever buying the wrong variety. And it is frustrating to deal with common names which seem to vary from town to town.
Fortunately, Most gardeners do know a little Latin and they can make educated guesses about horticultural nomenclature. For instance, colors are relatively easy to translate. Alba or album means white and the prefix lacti means milky white. Campanula lactiflora has milky white flowers. Niger means black.
Azurea means blue. With a little guessing gardeners can realize rubra and rubrum means red.
I looked up glauca and found it means gray or bluish-green with a white bloom on the leaves. Argenteum means silvery, luteum means yellow and purpurea, amazingly enough , means purple.
Many plant names indicate where they originated. Thus you can easily translate japonica (Japan), chinensis or sinensis (China), australis (Australia) or canadensis (Canada or North America in general).
I have noticed that number of words describe shapes: cordate - heart-shaped with a basal notch; dentate or serrate - toothed; latifolia - broad leaves; lunate - shaped like a crescent moon; ovate - egg-shaped with the broadest part below the middle; persicifolia - peach shaped leaves; and rotundifolia - round-leaved.
Other words indicate texture: lanate - wooly; glabrous - without hairs, smooth; tomentosa - wooly with curly matted hairs; velutinous - velvety.
Many words give information about growing habit. Repens, also reptans and procumbens, means creeping. Divaricata means spreading or growing in a straggling manner. Phlox divaricata is the creeping variety that spreads over roadside banks in the spring.
Some words give information about the flowers: glomerata - blossoms are clustered into more or less rounded heads; paniculata - means flowers arranged in panicles; A panicle is a loose, irregularly spreading flower cluster.
Phlox paniculata is the flat-headed phlox variety which is further described is a number of ways. Maxima means largest; polyantha - many flowers; grandiflorus - with large flowers; foetida - bad smelling; graveolens - heavily scented; spectabilis - spectacular, showy; and umbellatus which means having an umbel. That is to say, a flower cluster like a Queen Anne's Lace or chive blossom in which all the individual flower stalks arise from one point to form a flat-topped or ball-like cluster.
Some words just show up again and again. Sempervirens means evergreen; arborescens is becoming tree-like; gracilis is graceful; mutabilis is changeable; pumila is dwarf; vulgaris is common and officinalis relates to herbs and medicinal use.
It is not an affectation to use the proper Latin name for a flower. Latin names help you understand your plants. They are also accurate and will help you as you wander through the catalogs and nurseries.
If you identify an admired plant in your garden with its common and Latin names you will keep from looking like the jealous cook who always gives out her famous recipes - with just one or two little ingredients missing.
March 2004