Plant Selection - It's all in the Name

By John Petri
Landscape Designer

Once upon a time, each country in Europe knew the same plant by a different name. For instance, the common dandelion, as it was known in England, was called "dens de leon" in France and "leuvenzahn" in Germany. As you can imagine, this led to confusion whenever early botanists gathered to discuss developments in their field. The desire to have common language in which to discuss plants and animals led to all living things eventually being named in Latin, which at that time was commonly studied throughout Europe.

Fast forward to the present, when the closest we get to Latin is the Marine Corp's motto, Semper fidelis. Plants and animals are still, however, given Latin names and classified under a Latin naming system. This is fine for scientists, but why shouldn't we, the customer and the landscaper, just use the English names (the so-called "common names") we're familiar with? Do we really have to know Latin to be a successful gardener?

Well, yes and no. In some cases, knowing a little Latin can't hurt you and not knowing it could, in fact, cause you some problems – or at least, some unpleasant surprises.

To illustrate this point, let's consider the case of the Pincushion Flower. This is a case where the common name is less than helpful. According to a quick internet search, at least six different plants are known as Pincushion Flowers:  

Scabiosa caucasica	Scabiosa atropurpurea	Leptospermum scoparium
Leucospermum species	Armeria maritima	Knautia macedonica

As you can see, their flowers all look somewhat similar, but their growth habits and hardiness zones aren't at all alike. Now here's what could happen to someone looking for what they call a pincushion flower – in this case, Knautia macedonica – when they call a nursery on the phone:

Customer: "Hi, do you have a pincushion flower?"

Nursery staffer:  "Let me check, please hold… " Staffer looks in the yard and finds a scabiosa. "Yes, we have several, all in one gallon pots."

Customer: "Great! I'll stop by later today."

And when the customer arrives at the nursery, she's disappointed to find a scabiosa and not the knautia she was looking for. And if she has had a bad day or is in a crabby mood, the nursery staffer might hear about it!

Sometimes, the common names change over time. What used to be called Perennial Alyssum became Basket of Gold Alyssum and is now just Basket of Gold, presumably because it was confused with the annual Alyssum (which itself isn't an alyssum either – it's technically a lobularia).

In other cases, different parts of the country call plants by different names. A case in point: earlier this year, a very nice woman called Creekside looking for a dwarf Japanese lilac like the ones she had owned in Indiana. I thought that perhaps she had meant a Japanese tree lilac, which is being used as a small street tree, growing 25 tall and blooming in the early summer with fuzzy white flowers. But no, she wanted a light purple flowered, eight foot tall and eight foot wide shrub. This sounded like a dwarf Korean lilac. She was adamant, however, that she had to have a dwarf Japanese lilac. I strongly suspect that they are the same plant, just with different names in different parts of the country. The funny thing here is that there is no dwarf Japanese or Korean lilacs in the horticultural literature – both names are attached to the same plant by the growers! 

This brings up another, related, topic – cultivar names. In the above example, 'Palibin' is a cultivar of Syringa meyeri, marketed in Wisconsin as a Dwarf Korean Lilac. Had our customer in the above example asked for a lilac called 'Palibin', we would've been speaking the same language and I could have sold her a beautiful lilac. Be aware that most of the perennials and shrubs in nurseries or catalogs are cultivars – that is, CULTIvated VARieties of species or of a cross between two or more species. Cultivar names can be quite important: not knowing the cultivar name can, in fact, cause you to purchase the wrong plant for your garden. 

For instance, if you want to purchase the same yellow coreopsis that you saw in a friend's garden or in a catalog and didn't know that plant's cultivar name, you would more than likely get a coreopsis with the same color flowers but with an entirely different growth habit. If your friend was growing a lance-leaved coreopsis (Coreopsis lanceolata) cultivar called 'Flying Saucers' and you purchased the species instead, you'd get a plant that grows three feet tall and wide instead of one that grows only 18 inches tall and wide. 

In other cases, one cultivar may be less invasive or aggressive, have different hardiness, have different flower colors, or have different grow habits than another cultivar of the same species. Newer cultivars, in particular tend to be smaller and less aggressive than older ones.

So what does all this mean? Well, as usual, the more you know the more empowered you are. In gardening, you probably don't need to know much Latin to be successful – it's more a matter of knowing the Latin in cases where confusing common names exist. It's probably more important to know cultivar names, especially if you're trying to find a specific plant for a specific place in the garden. Buying the wrong cultivar can mean the difference between a beautiful garden and one with oversized plants running rampant.

Click here to view last month's Ramblings, "Daylilies - not just Stella de Oro!"  

© 2010 by J. Petri