What's in a plants name? What does a plants name mean? How to find out what a plant name means! Plant name info information. Learn learning the latin meaning of a plant. Latin names for plants and what they mean!

What is in a plants name?

There is a world of information contained in a plant's name. The common name, which varies from region to region, is more often than not inaccurate; in Florida, Magnolia Grandiflora is often called bull bay, while in Virginia it is known as evergreen magnolia.

Yet common names are informative because they reveal the feelings and associations that people have had with plants throughout history. Some plants, not related at all, share the same common name because they happen to have similar characteristics:

Maranta leuconeura erythroneura and Fittonia Verschaffeltii are both called red-nerve plant because they both have fine red lines on their leaves, but that is where the similarity ends. Most common names are fanciful, whimsical, affectionate, or plain daffy, like purple-passion vine, rabbit's foot fern, freckle face, my heart ivy, or wart plant!

The botanical name, which is always in Latin, the universal language of science, is the correct and unchanging classification assigned to the plant by taxonomists who work according to a specific set of rules. It provides an encyclopedia of a plants characteristics in an age-old form. Both Latin and common names are used on the cards.

The first word in the Latin name is the genus, which identifies a group of plants with common characteristics. The second word in the Latin name indicates the species, which identifies a single kind of plant within the genus classification.

For example, the plant commonly known as the aluminum plant has the botanical name Pilea Cadierei. Pilea refers to the genus, but Cadierei identifies the species of Pilea.

If there is a third word in the Lain name, it indicated the botanical variety or a sub species, which identifies the plant as a separate entity within a species. Botanical varieties are plants that occur naturally but differ from the species in certain characteristics. Fittonia Verschaffeltii argyroneura (silver-nerve plant) differs from Fittonia Verschaffeltii (red-nerve plant) by having silver markings and not red ones.

Argyroneura tells us about the silver markings. If there is a word in single quotation marks, it is used to indicate the cultivar (a variety of the plant that originated and has persisted under cultivation).

Sansevieria trifasciata "Hahnii," knows as birds-nest snake plant, originated in a nursery in Louisiana and has been around as a houseplant ever since. The world in single quotes can be a person's name or a world referring to a distinguishing feature of the plant: flame violet is named Episcia Cupreata "Metallica" ("like shiny metal") for the metallic sheen on its leaves.

Dracaena deremensis "Janet Craig" is named for a nursery man's wife It's up to the person who discovers the cultivar to name it!

If you see the word hybrid, it means the plant is the result of the crossbreeding of two species and is a new plant not found in nature. Thus Beefsteak begonia is named Begonia X Erythrophylla, which means the plant is a new one developed from two separate species.

This is a small sampling of Latin words often used in botanical names. They describe as well as identify plants, and are not as complicated as they may seem at first glance.