How Plants Are Named
Tagged as: scientific names
Common or Trade Names
Plants can have many different common names. Depending on where it grows, the same plant may have many different regional names. It may also have other common names in other countries in which it grows. For example the plant we know as serviceberry is also known as sarvisberry, shadbush, shadblow, saskatoon, Junebush, and Juneberry depending on in what part of North America it is growing. The common dandelion is also known as blowball, canker wort, Irish daisy, leotodon taraxacum, lion's tooth, puffball, and wild endive in various English speaking countries. It also is know as dent de lion or pissenlit vulgaire in France, Löwenzahn in German, dente-de-leão in Portuguese, achicoria amarga, amargón or diente de león in Spanish, and there are many others.
Making common names even more confusing is the fact that a single common name can be applied to many different kinds of plants which may not even be remotely related to it. For example, the plant we know as bluebells belongs to the group of plants known to the scientific community as Campanula. The common name bluebells has also been applied to plants belonging to Hyacinthoides (Europe), Endymion (Asia), Polemonium, Mertensia, Penstemon (North America), and Wahlenbergia (Australia).
Trade names are special names with legal standing that are protected by laws. These are designated by the trademark™ and registered trademark® symbols. Examples of trade names are: Camelot ® crabapple, Celebration ® maple, Royal Heritage ™ hellebore. The place to go for more information about trademarks is the US Patent and Trademark Office website: www.uspto.gov.
Botanical or Scientific Names
Unlike common names, botanical or scientific names are applied to only one kind of plant. They typically consist of two words; the first is called the genus name the second the species name. Together they define a single unique type of plant. This system of using binomials or two names to describe a specific plant was begun in the 18th century by the famous Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus. Since that time, botanists and taxonomists (people who study plants and their classification and naming) have developed a system of international rules that determine how these names are created and used. This set of rules is called the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature.
These rules set out how a scientific name is created, used and printed. A scientific name should be in italics or underlined. The genus name always begins with a capital letter, and the rest of the name is always in lower case letters. These names are in Latin, or are Latinized. A person’s name following the scientific name is the name of the person who first described the plant using that name. For example our common white oak is known as Quercus alba L. The genus name for oaks is Quercus. The species name for white oak is alba, and the author of the combination describing white oak Quercus alba is Carl Linnaeus which is abbreviated as the letter L. Occasionally you may find the letter x or the multiplication sign used in a scientific name. This signifies that the plant is a cross of hybrid derivation. Acer x freemanii is a cross between silver and red maple. Quercus x bebbiana is a cross between bur oak and white oak, x Amelosorbus or ×Amelosorbus is a cross between Amelanchier and Sorbus.
In some cases a sub-group of the name is created. In these cases scientists use a three- part name using a special abbreviation to show what kind of plant sub-group is being described: ssp. (subspecies), var. (variety) or f. (forma). Of these, subspecies and varieties pertain to different sub-groups of a plant that are tied to geography. A forma pertains to a variation that can occur anywhere in the range of a plant. For example; Cercis canadensis var. texensis refers to the sub-group of our common redbud tree that is found growing in Texas. The name Cercis canadensis f. alba refers to a sub-group of our common redbud tree that blooms with white flowers rather that the more typical pink flowers.
Horticulturists have created special names for individual plants with unique characteristics called cultivars. A cultivar name is always printed in normal type and is enclosed in single quotes. For example; Quercus alba ‘Fastigiata’ is the name of an narrow, upright growing form of our white oak. The letters PP followed by a number signify that the plant has been patented. The place to go for more information about plant patents is the US Patent and Trademark Office website: www.uspto.gov.
The words that make up the scientific name of a plant all mean something. They are Latin or Latinized words. Sometimes they are the old Roman name for a particular kind of plant (Acer, Cornus, Quercus), Latinized words of other languages are also used especially Greek names (Scilla, Artemisia, Pyrethrum), descriptive names or terms (alba-white, laciniata-cut, sanguinea-blood-red), or names of people for which the plant was named (Forsythia, Fothergilla, Magnolia). Finding out with the words of a scientific name mean can be fun, and enlightening. A trip to the Sterling Morton Library will get you started on how and why plants are named.
Even though scientific or botanical names may seem daunting, we use them every day without knowing it. Aster, chrysanthemum, forsythia, fothergilla, magnolia, narcissus, protea, rhododendron, sansevieria, scilla, and sorghum are a few examples of the scientific names for plants that we grow in our yards, gardens, or in our houses and use in our everyday language.