If I remember correctly, it was Wednesday evenings when my three college roommates and I would gather in the parlor of our apartment on Boysen Street in San Luis Obispo to watch Star Trek: the Next Generation. One of my roommates, who has since returned to Cal Poly as a professor of rangeland resource management, traditionally made cornbread for the occasion . . . with butter and honey . . . mmm. So, for half an hour each week, we learned more about the remotely futuristic cultures of planets many light years away than about our studies.
Thanks to a contraption referred to only on rare occasion as the ‘universal translator’, nearly everyone in this quadrant of the galaxy will be able to understand each other within the next four centuries. No matter what language is spoken, it will all be perceived as the same universal language. Unfortunately, the ‘universal translator’ has not yet been invented. The many languages used on this single planet will consequently continue to interfere with accurate communication.
This is why horticulturists, biologists, and many other professionals who may interact with colleagues who speak other languages or even slightly different regional dialects use Latin to identify, among other things, biological organisms. Latin names may be cumbersome to pronounce and daunting to spell, but are universal to those of us who use them. This is important because the ‘common names’ are so regionally variable.
For example, some of the European maples that we know as maples here are known as sycamores in England, but are known everywhere by their Latin name of Acer. (Latin is traditionally italicized.) Similarly, North American sycamores that are known as maples, planes or plane trees in various regions are all likewise known everywhere by their Latin name of Platanus. With few exceptions, the universality of Latin names facilitates accurate identification.
Latin names are therefore very helpful when researching plants. A tree known simply as a ‘cedar’ might be a calocedrus, arborvitae, juniper, cypress, chamaecyparis or a true cedar just to name a few. Knowing that this particular tree is more specifically a ‘red cedar’ perhaps limits the possibilities to arborvitae or juniper. (Differentiation between ‘Eastern’ and ‘Western’ red cedars is often neglected in the East and West where the respective cedar is predominant.) Identifying the tree as a Juniperus virginiana will help us find the most accurate information about it, even though it is not really a cedar at all, but a juniper.
Tony Tomeo 
Thank you, as always, for such clear explanations of botanical nomenclature. This is one of the things that I think really troubles some beginning gardeners, although now that it is becoming more common, perhaps the reasons are clearer.
I know I encountered a lot of resistance to it in my retail gardening days that I am now not sure that I see so much even as an ordinary consumer. So maybe there’s been progress. An educated buy at the garden center is a better gardener.
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This article is a bit redundant to another that posted not so long ago, although it explains it differently. I typically compare botanic nomenclature to automotive nomenclature. I actually find that botanic nomenclature was more respected in the past. Coincidentally, its standards started to deteriorate at the same time as the standards of automotive nomenclature started to deteriorate. Nowadays, species names are typically omitted. Species are identified merely by their genus and cultivar names. That is partly due to the prominence of interspecific hybrids. In the past a species name for the hybrid would be created, and preceded by an ‘X’ to designate that it is a hybrid. No one seems to care any more.
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I especially loved the one where you compared it to cars. That just seems to make so much sense. But of course, you’re absolutely right, the way they name cars today has gotten awful. Some brands are so much worse than others (I am thinking of Lexus as a horrible example. You pay all that money for your car just to brag about some jumbled numbers and letters? BMW is no better.) Clearly why I would never own either and sully then with all my garden center purchases!
And yes, of course I know what you mean about the little x for the hybrids. My weeping cherry is properly prunus subhirtella x ‘snow fountain. ‘ These days, it would most likely just be Snow Fountain (or worse yet Fountains!)
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My articles about nomenclature may get to be redundant because I post both new articles and recycled articles from years ago, and the topic gets discussed probably annually. (I think that I just recently posted a new article about it, while this recent article was much older.) While selecting some species for my garden, and even at work, I prefer some ‘wild’ specimens comparable to what would be found in the wild. I could get cultivars of some of them, but I know that some of such cultivars are very different from the straight species. Someone sent me seedlings of American beautyberry and American holly because that is what I want. I could get cultivars if I want them also, but that would be later. When I grow black elderberry, I will likely grow them from seed, just to experience them how those who live with them know them. If I like them enough, I could then get cultivars. Years ago, most cultivars were selected from straight species. Nowadays, it is impossible to know who the parents are.
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That is truly the frustrating part! I don’t do anything like you do, but I do know, for example, that certain cultivars of heuchera grow better for me than others. But their breeding and parentage has grown so muddled and so secretive that I have just given up! And that’s just one plant example.
Sometimes all this “choice” is a real disservice to consumers.
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Young consumers find new and unusual cultivars to be more interesting than the old traditional cultivars that are so much more sustainable. Some of the modern cultivars are designed for failure, because that is good for repeat sales.
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I honestly think that’s true. Sad–but true.
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Is that in regard to how modern cultivars are designed for failure?
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Yes. I honestly believe one breeder is guilty of it–but I would never be so foolish as to name it. It’s not a household name, or one that the public would know.
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I used to get samples for evaluation, and had some sent to Brent also. No one sends us their samples anymore because they do not like what I say about them. They only send samples to those who say what they want them to say. None of the other columnists write about the samples more than a few months later, when the samples die.
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At least you were honest, as you should have been. I have gotten some samples, and I have read some things about them–and then they die. And I report that they died, and why. But later, I read such glowing things and I think ,”what the heck? Is this even the same plant?” Plant breeding is a crazy world.
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The reviews that I read do not seem to be very inaccurate in regard to likely experiences of those who grew the samples for a few weeks. I kept some alive for that long. Some describe how healthy the plants were when they were unwrapped, . . . and that is all. That is not how I work. If the samples are described as ‘sustainable’ as all of them are nowadays, I expect them to survive longer than a few weeks. When they do not, I say so.
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Yes, me too and I have a tough site. But you know, not everyone gardens in perfect soil. The growers need to hear what their plants will–and won’t–take.
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The growers may need to hear it, but the marketers want to share only good reviews.
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