Plant Names

A Guide to Botanical Nomenclature

Roger Spencer, Rob Cross

• Publisher: CSIRO PUBLISHING
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781486311460
• Edition: 4
• Topic: Scienze biologiche
• Subtopic: Biologia

Plant Names is an invaluable guide to the use of scientific, commercial and common names for plants and the conventions for writing them. Written by horticultural botanists at the Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria, this book covers the naming of wild plants, plants modified by humans, why plant names change, their pronunciation and hints to help remember them, along with updated sections on trademarks and plant breeder's rights. The final section provides a detailed guide to resources useful to people using plant names.

This fourth edition is based on the recently updated International Code of Nomenclature for Algae, Fungi, and Plants and the International Code of Nomenclature for Cultivated Plants. It makes this technical information readily understandable to a range of readers, including botanists, publishers, professional horticulturists, nursery workers, hobby gardeners and anyone interested in plant names.

Part one

wild plants

Common names

Names act as a highly effective shorthand for the objects around us, especially those items that we use regularly or regard as important. Try explaining to someone what happened in a room of 30 people without using the names of the people!

Hunter–gatherers know the plants on which they depend for food, medicine, clothing and tools, but when agriculture led to urbanised societies the need to remember plant names diminished. Today we are distanced physically and psychologically from the natural environment so that our experience of plant names may be poorer than it has been for generations. Most people know the names of only a few trees, common garden and food plants, and some weeds. A wide-ranging knowledge of plants is very unusual, perhaps only found in some professional horticulturists, keen gardeners, naturalists and botanists. In contrast, many of us are familiar with a range of technical terms used for the parts and functioning of our computers, cars and smart-phones, simply because we are so directly dependent on them.

Structure

Plant common names have a similar form in most cultures. They are generally composed of one or two words that reflect some aspect of the plant such as its appearance, origin or use. We often name and group objects, including ourselves, using a noun–adjective binomial, which is a name consisting of two words, one being the name of an object, the other a short description of that object. So, we speak of classes of objects like rice, roses, and wattles. And within each class particular individuals might be named, for example, basmati rice, climbing rose, and Golden Wattle. The binomial expresses both similarity and difference: it indicates a broad group with shared characteristics and, within that, some individual variation.

Origin

We assume that most common names arose when the need for a name occurred, and that they were then maintained through common usage via the direct experience of the plants in nature or gardens – that ‘common name’ meant ‘common usage’. Nowadays, we tend to look up the common names of plants in books, except when they are familiar and widely grown garden or food plants.

Figure 2: Archontophoenix cunninghamiana, Bangalow Palm

Image: Rob Cross

Common names provide valuable insights into cultural history. Familiar Western temperate common names like elm, oak, pine and rose originated long ago in Europe or Asia and spread across the world with the cultivated plant globalisation that accompanied European colonial expansion. Australia, as a former British colony, is typical of these colonies, using a blend of common names – like these old Eurasian ones already noted for exotics, but also names of native plants that were taken from local Aboriginal languages – like Mulga, Wilga, Gungurru and Bangalow Palm (Fig. 2) – but also other names given by the early European settlers, and referring to their striking appearance, like Kangaroo Paw and Grass Tree … or they were named for their similarity to European cultivated plants (e.g. Native Fuchsia and Willow Myrtle). Trees were sometimes given the names of other trees with similar timber to their European counterparts, such as Silky Oak and Mountain Ash.

Common names are still being introduced as, for example, the names of Asian herbs, fruits and vegetables newly introduced to the Western world (often as English translations or transliterations) like Vietnamese Hotmint, Pak Choi, Snake Bean and Star Fruit.

Common names as an alternative to botanical names

For many practical people the Latin system of naming plants appears archaic. Latin is a complicated, unfamiliar and dead language. Latin names also seem to have little relevance to commercial realities. Are they really necessary in the context of, say, a retail nursery? After all, they can be even more confronting to customers than they are to nursery workers, and that does not help sales.

For these reasons it is sometimes suggested that we abandon the unfamiliar Latin and instead use the much simpler common names. In principle, this sounds like a good idea, but on closer inspection there are several problems:

• One kind of plant may have many different common names and the same name may be used for different plants. Perhaps the commonest of common English names is Lily, which is part of the common name of well over 200 different kinds of plants … and then there are names like pea, bean, grass and palm.

• Common names can change over time.

• Common name usage is difficult to monitor as it might vary not only between countries, but also within a particular country, and even from one local area and community to another.

• When a single species with a single common name is split into two new species, should both still retain the same common name?

Botanical names are a way of grouping botanically related plants into families, genera, species and so on. Common names may also be used like this, so we have, for example, brassicas, eucalypts and Thunberg’s Gardenia, which are the common name equivalents for plants in the botanical categories Brassicaceae, Eucalyptus and Gardenia thunbergii. However, common names may classify plants in all sorts of non-botanical ways, so they may also give a false impression of plant relationships. The Avocado Pear (Persea americana) and Sheoak (Casuarina and Allocasuarina) are botanically unrelated to their namesakes Pear (Pyrus) and Oak (Quercus). The common name Mint is based on a plant’s smell and flavour, and therefore does not always apply to plants in the genus Mentha, the culinary mint genus. We categorise food plants into vegetables and fruits, and garden plants by their garden function as a windbreak, groundcover or climber. Eggs-and-bacon is a name given to almost any Australian native plant with red and yellow pea-like flowers. Though all these plants are in the botanical family Fabaceae, it is the red and yellow colouring that is an equally important factor in determining the common name.

The following example illustrates the difficulties associated with using the popular common name Mountain Ash. The Mountain Ash of the Australian state of Victoria, Eucalyptus regnans (Fig. 3), is so called because its timber resembles that of the European Ash, Fraxinus excelsior. In Tasmania, it is known as the Swamp Gum, a name that in Victoria is generally given to Eucalyptus ovata. In England, the Mountain Ash is a small upland tree with ash-like leaves and red berries, Sorbus aucuparia, which in Scotland is called Rowan. In America, the Mountain Ash is Sorbus americana. You see the problem!

There are no rules governing the formation, writing and use of common names as there are for scientific names, so publishing houses and journals often adopt their own policies on such matters.

Figure 3: Mountain Ash, Eucalyptus regnans, in Victoria, Australia, one of the world’s tallest trees

Image from: Ray C (1932–33). The World of Wonder. Amalgamated Press, London.

Latin botanical names overcome all this confusion because there is only one botanical name for each kind of plant, even though that name might change from time to time! The principle of one name for one kind of plant is universally appealing and important regardless of whether the names we are using are commercial, legal or scientific. With modern marketing, nurseries insist that no-one uses their legally protected names or company trademarks, and that proper databases and records are kept to ensure that these entities can be distinguished from those of others. Botany has achieved this for the entire plant kingdom for well over 250 years.

Attempts have been made to avoid unfamiliar Latin by insisting on a ‘one plant, one name’ approach to common names, which certainly simplifies databasing. This is done either by inventing names where they are lacking, or attempting to regulate them by producing standardised lists in which only one common name is provided for each species (or a preferred common name is suggested). Latin may be translated directly into English so, for example, Mentha rotundifolia might be translated and listed as Round-leaved Mint even though this name may never have been in common usage. This is a way of giving common names to the many plants that do not already have them. Though this avoids the problem of using Latin, it creates other difficulties. Who has the authority to choose the preferred name in cases like this and on what should their choice be made, and how is everyone to find ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Dedication
• Title
• Copyright
• Acknowledgements
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• Codes of plant nomenclature
• Part 1 – Wild plants
• Part 2 – Cultivated plants and cultigens
• Part 3 – Using plant names
• Part 4 – Plant name resources
• Appendix
• Glossary and abbreviations
• References
• Index