Learn to be a Latin lover to avoid any confusion
LATIN plant names come in for a dreadful ear-bashing. Some people think using them looks flash, marking you out as a know-all.As the detractors point out, you call your friends Fred or Jim and not the honourable Frederick James Nettlebarrow, BSc. Fair enough. But down in the garden, there’s a very good reason for a spot of Latin – common names can be so misleading.
You know where you stand with forget-me-nots, Solomon’s seal and busy Lizzie but when several plants share the same common name you can have a problem.
I mean, if someone mentions their nutmeg bush, how would you know they were talking about the tropical spice tree or theVictorian shrubbery favourite with the dangly, purple, earring-like bracts, otherwise known as Leycesteria formosa? And quince could be the edible tree Cydonia oblonga or the ornamental flowering quince Chaenomeles japonica.
So it’s not just a matter of the experts being pedantic.When you’re asked for advice, you need to know which plant you are being asked about, otherwise you might give the wrong answer. For instance, when most people talk about mare’s tail, they have in mind the proper weed Equisetum arvense, which is correctly called horsetail. Real mare’s tail is Hippuris vulgaris, a feathery wild pond plant that only grows in deep water. So your well-meant advice on smothering it with old carpet would be well wide of the mark.
Misunderstandings can also arise when the same plant has several common names.When you go round the country, you’ll find couch grass called twitch, scotch, quelch and squitch.
Butterbur (Petasites hybridus) is called cleat in Lincolnshire, clot in Yorkshire and clout in Cheshire. Meanwhile, bindweed might be known colloquially as bellbine, old man’s nightcap, fairies’ umbrella or, my favourite, devil’s guts, a name that picturesquely describes the plant’s writhing mass of roots.
THE one thing you can say for common names is that they’re usually pretty memorable. Lady in the bath and bleeding heart are so much more evocative than Dicentra spectabilis andVenus’s navelwort makes you curious to grow Omphalodes linifolia.
Some common names are quite helpful, too, since they tell you about a plant’s useful properties. Anything whose common name starts with the word “dyer’s”, such as dyer’s greenweed (Genista tinctoria) or dyer’s weld (Reseda luteola), can safely be assumed to be good for colouring cloth.
Goutweed, brought by the romans and better known as ground elder, was soon found by the locals to help with dicky feet.
But other plants have acquired medicinal reputations – and names to match – just because they look like the thing they were supposed to cure.The spotted leaves of lungwort may resemble a pair of lungs affected by tuberculosis but I don’t see it being prescribed.
Wallflowers do indeed grow in walls and bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis) really does bleed red sap from its roots when injured.
Bottlebrush flowers are long, tubular heads of bristles and daylilies do flower for a day or so. Snapdragons snap and creeping Jenny creeps, and soapwort really does froth up in warm water – it was once used for laundering.
So next time you hear a gardening sage rattling off a stream of Latin, don’t turn up your nose – unless they’re talking about vegetables.Veggies are only ever known by their common names.
Start going on about Brassica oleracea to a greengrocer and you’ll be met by blank looks instead of being shown to the cabbage and leek department.
Which all goes to show that the inner man doesn’t care what it’s called, as long as it’s dinner.