TOBY BUCKLAND
Toby looks at the rebranding of asters and other Latin names
ALL the best people change names… Rachel Markle became Meghan, rap star Snoop Dogg is Snoop Lion and Kanye West, in case you forget, only answers to ‘Ye’! Botanists are keeping up with Ye and his Kardashian kin by playing tunes with ever more Latin names, especially those of our most loved late-autumn flowers.
Symphyotrichum, for example, are the Michaelmas daisies formally known as ‘aster’. And you may ask why re-christen them at all when the name didn’t need fixing? But the thing is, it did…
According to botanists, when the aster family was created it was bundled together for expediency – as opposed to accuracy – with hundreds of diverse flowers clustered into a clan that misrepresents its true diversity.
Although the plants have a similar look, with a golden boss of stamens at the centre and purple ray florets – petals, to you and me – around the outside, scientifically they are like ducks and seagulls… they fly and bob about on water, but genetically they are quite distinct.
The tag ‘aster’ will be kept for some Eurasian species and garden cultivars, such as the lovely knee-high Aster x frikartii ‘Mönch’. However, the rest will be re-branded to Tripolium, Galatella and Symphyotrichum.
But why, I hear you ask, do they have to be so hard to pronounce? Well that, I suspect, is down to human nature. Sat at a computer with a new word to invent, who wouldn’t want to press as many keys as possible? And if you thought the word ‘symphyotrichum’ was a mouthful, you’ll love the new tag for sedum – Hylotelephium, which sounds like a character from Dr Who!
Still, as the Great Bard wrote, ‘A rose by any other name would smell as sweet’. Whatever you call them, bee-friendly Hylotelephium (sedum) are must-have late-season perennials for partnering up with Echinacea and grasses.
And to be fair, not all changes are for the worst. The old Latin moniker for Kaffir Lily was Schizostylis coccinea – a name I’d avoid saying in polite company. Now it’s Hesperantha. Whisper it slowly, and you could be talking about a cocktail from M&S Make mine a large one…
“Not all changes are for the worst”