Do you use botanical names when discussing plants?

Since starting work at the Botanical Gardens, I am learning more and more botanical names and recognize the importance of using them so I hope one day to be able to use them exclusively. However, I am not quite there yet....
My feat of the year (lol) was mastering Megaskepasma Erythrochlamys (Brazilian Red Cloak)...

As a botanist, I often forget the common names of plants! (of course they vary from place to place..at least the Latin stays the same).

I prefer to refer to the botanical names, but I try to be aware of the common names as well because that is what most people recognize.

I'm trying to use more and more botanical names as I learn them.

I have been gardening in the 'serious mode' for five years now and I've come to realize that common names are often confusing or not precise when trying to talk with other gardeners or when ordering plants and seeds.

And it's kind of fun to brush off the school girl Latin in the cobwebs of my mind!

I voted

i use both although mostly (90%) the common name because i usually can not remember the botanical - when searching plants i will try to use the botanical if i have it.

I tend to use both since the customers where I work often don't know botanical names. And then there are days when I draw a blank one way or the other!

I use both, often together depending on whom I am talking to. I love common names, and finding the different common names for the same plant is always an adventure. But botanical names do make it easy to be specific.

Like Mamasita, I tend to use both And draw blanks on both! l.o.l.

Both (or neither), depending on who I'm with and how well my brain is functioning that moment...LOL!

I voted some of each, but I tend to the common names. HOWEVER, that having been said, I've run into trouble with a particular begonia I was in hot pursuit of......
apparently the Cane Begonia I was looking for as an Angel Wing comes in a fairy size, and so does Elephant Ear.... So, I was getting the teensy, tiny ones, and being told they were immature, when in fact that was their full size!! So, after much searching, I found it was a Cane Begonia I was looking for. These reach 5-6 ft tall, not the 6 inches tall the smaller cousin reaches! I wish I could remember the botanical name for it..........CRS lol

Susan

Mostly botanical. Common names can be very misleading. I also refer to certain family members using Latin.

I rather prefer using botanical names. If I don t use them regularly I might forget them. This is another language if you don t practice it you can forget it. But I also use the common name depending with the person that I am taking.

I tend to know Genus for a lot of things, but not always species, and try to use what I know along with the common name. I figure it is better to say Kalanchoe, Mother of Millions than just M-O-M. At least it gives the person I am speaking with a starting point. In my oh so humble opinion...lol

Some of each depending on what pops into my head first.

I don't do botanicals as that wasn't what i learned as a kid growing up and I now have a hard time when I want a plant finding the names people use now days for them. And I can't seem to remember them.

I'm very much an amateur gardener, never having had a yard but the once, but loving plants so much I often turn my living-room into my personal jungle in most places I end up. Now that I'm in a climate where I can go out all year without my arthritis making me miserable, I have all of my growing collection outdoors, spread around the little concrete pad outside my apartment door according to their light-requirements. :) I started with using just common names, then found that a lot of the time, the plants I was wanting to learn about had been misidentified! Now, I use a combination of both common and botanical, as it's so much easier to search data-bases for info with the botanical moniker.

No, people look at me funny when I do that, so I don't do that anymore... (lol)

I would prefer to use botanical names exclusively, since the confusion over common names is never ending. They also don't translate well across languages and borders. However, I'm always trying to learn the common names of plants so that I can answer the constant "What is that?" questions I get from non-plant people with something they'll remember or even recognize. It doesn't help that the latin names are always in flux--just try telling most people that one of the "common" names for Syngoniums is Nephthytis, because that's how it was referred to in the trade before they changed it.

On the other hand, it was just last year that I witnessed an hour long argument over the proper pronunciation of "Hosta" (which seems to lend its latin name to the common more often than not, whether you pronounce the o long or short). Other names I only ever hear said out loud shortened, such Brugs, Paphs, Rhodes, and Glads. The latter two here lend their latin to their common names, and the former two ought to.

And there are actually many fruits and vegetables for which the common name is more informative (Brassica, Cucurbita, and Prunus, for instance) since the description starts and ends with the cultivar. And once you get into intergeneric crosses or really anything that has been heavily hybridized, the botanical names become meaningless without a full pedigree. Sometimes the botanical nomenclature gives up entirely, using such useful species designations as 'hybrida' or simply listing 'spp.', and once you get down to subcultivars and what not it becomes difficult to tell your pie pumpkin varieties from your acorn squash, let alone define the subtleties of a particular variety of delicata.

But as long as I can use something more concise and perspicacious than Lycopersicon esculentum, I prefer the botanic names.

I've pondered this:

I use Latin names with other botanists and for record keeping but I try to switch to common names with other people because otherwise they just stare at me like I'm speaking another language :)

I too get a bit frustrated when the taxonomists feel the need to split up a genus and replace perfectly good names like Eurotia with something much longer and harder to spell like Krascheninnikovia.

Eurotia is a much more pleasant name. Everybody knows that names should be limited to 3 syllables.

Although I do catalog my plants by both the latin name and common name, I find it simpler and less pretentious to use the common name in most conversations. Even at a nursery, I will often ask where the common name plants are located, then ask if they carry a specific cultivar I am looking for. I do enjoy a 'gotcha' latin naming game with my sister (a fellow gardener) and my son (a landscape architect grad), but it's all in fun and we often laugh at different pronunciations we have come up with. For the life of me, I can't remember how to say houttuynia which I just call hootenanny.

Hey Kaitlin, if you are using Botanical names, you are speaking another language...albeit a dead one....grin

Yes it depends on who I'm talking too, as well as that is the only name I have ever known it as. Also I haven't been with DG forever either.
I do try however but many of the names are so ssimilarI get confused.
lol

Victor - too funny. I do the same thing. I also use botanical names of some of my favorites for my computer passwords.

When I was teaching an introductory plant ID course in grad school I found that my students learned the latin names better if I explained what they meant. I think learning by rote is the hardest way to remember anything; having a meaning or story to go with the name is much easier. I love the Info link next to the names in PlantFiles and use it to look up names that I have a hard time remembering.

For me it depends--when I'm posting here I primarily use botanical names since it makes it more clear what plant you're talking about. But in casual conversations with friends I'll usually use common names because they're easier to pronounce.

I try as much as possible to use the full Latin terms .
But in common usage I do tend to just use Genus names.
I will go species or ssp if I'm showing or describing a specific plant but usually Genus is as much info as most gardeners want to know.
I have even gotten my neighbor to differentiate between Alocasia, Colocasia and Xanthosoma instead of just saying EE... and now they are Musa basjoo not Hardy Banana Plants
I do hear more and more gardeners using Genus names instead of just Daisy or Cornflower, etc at the local nurseries and big box stores though.
So it's starting to creep into common usage.

Ric

Broadly speaking, I use the common name more often for plants that I learned as a child and the scientific name more often for plants I learned as an adult. Also, I tend to use the common name if it is much shorter than the scientific name, e.g. "toyon" vs "Heteromeles arbutifolia". I'm sure that I pronounce a lot of them incorrectly. Hey, I'm from Pittsburgh. If there is a harsh and horrible way of pronouncing, I'm probably doing it.

Nine states and 2 foreign countries later, I am trying to only think of the latin names as the so called "common name" is different everyplace that I have been. I couldn't even order crushed stone for my driveway without learning that it is called "chat" in southern Missouri(last stateside home). (Chat/chrusher run/fines/quarter down/chrushed stone/stone dust...)

I am not compilable using them because 1 I can not spell them 2 I can not pronounce them.

I have enough trouble spelling common words. My poor spell check sometime just throws up it's little arms and runs screaming down the street. Any one finding a lose spell check please let me know.


This message was edited Dec 1, 2009 9:01 AM

Songsofjoy,
I also use the botanical/Latin names of some of my favorite plants as my computer passwords. I have also included numbers as well.

Even doing that, someone hacked into my PayPal account and bought a laptop on eBay and was having it sent to Vietnam. Luckily, PayPal was on top of it and they contacted the laptop seller to tell them NOT to ship the laptop. I now make my passwords even more difficult by using caps for some of the letters as well as using special characters also.

If a hacker finds out that you garden, then they could use software that uses botanical names to try and hack into a system since I would guess that many gardeners use botanical Latin for their passwords.
My .02
Mike

I think I mostly use botanical names and add common name after. I do have interesting spelling though so maybe I'm not using either ^_^

You do seem to have your own system dahlianut.

OUCH! LOL!

I like to try using them, but people don't know what you are taking about til you break it down
to plain used names.

Like most, I use a bit of each, depending on the audience. I do prefer the botanical names, tho, simply because it's more precise. And I LOVE polysyllabic names, one of my favorites being Salpiglossis sinuata...I refuse to call them anything else!