Exploring botanical names requires a trip through history
Gardeners use a lot of botanical Latin without thinking much about it. When European naturalists began cataloging plant discoveries from the rest of the world, they didn’t bother assigning common names.
All those plants had names in Japanese or Cherokee or Xhosa, but their collectors may not have recorded them.
So by default, the botanical genus entered the vernacular. Some coinages refer to a plant’s physical characteristics or medicinal uses; others, to Greek gods and other mythological figures. Many, though, commemorate real people, some unjustly forgotten.
Why is that vine with the magenta-to-orange bracts, for one, called bougainvillea? And why is it pronounced boo-gan-VILL-ee-a, not boo-gan-VEE-ya?
It was named for Capt. Louis Antoine de Bougainville, a French explorer who circumnavigated the globe in the 1760s and thought he had discovered Tahiti, although the British got there first. But he had nothing to do with the discovery of the plant. His expedition’s botanist, Philibert Commerson, took credit for it. Most likely, though, it was collected near Rio de Janeiro by Jeanne Baret, Commerson’s lover and assistant, who had joined the crew of the Etoile disguised as a man.
It seems Bougainville was aware of the impersonation, and not happy with Commerson. Baret’s presence on board violated all the rules of the French Navy. Naming the new plant looks like a compensatory appeal to Bougainville’s ego, or mercy.
If he had gone by the book, Baret would have been abandoned in Brazil. But Bougainville was no Bligh; he let her stay with the ship. (She and Commerson were eventually left on the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius, where she was stranded after his untimely death. For the whole story, see “The Discovery of Jeanne Baret” by Glynis Ridley.)
Obscure botanists
Not all the namesake stories are so dramatic. Many plants bear the names of obscure European botanist-physicians: Johann Zinn, Anders Dahl, Pierre Magnol, Michel Begon. Linnaeus, the founder of botanical nomenclature (“God creates, Linnaeus organizes” was his motto), honored predecessors, colleagues, students and correspondents with plant genera.
Tillandsia, the genus of Spanish moss and other epiphytic “air plants,” commemorates Elias Tillandz, who got violently seasick on the Gulf of Bothnia and walked over 600 miles on his return journey to avoid another crossing. The roots of tillandsias never touch water.
A contemporary of Bougainville and Commerson, the English botanist Joseph Banks sailed with Capt. James Cook on his first voyage
and had a high old time in Tahiti. Back home, he became a patron of botany and the namesake for the South African banksias. The rose cultivar ‘Lady Banks’ honors his wife. Lady Banks, of course, was not in the picture when her future husband was cavorting in the South Pacific.
Dr. Alexander Garden
When Cuban crooners sing “Dos Gardenias,” they’re unknowingly name-checking Dr. Alexander Garden, a Scot who relocated to South Carolina in the 18th century. Garden sent plant specimens to botanist Carl Linnaeus and studied salamanders and cochineal bugs. When a smallpox epidemic hit Charleston in 1760, he vaccinated 2,000 of its residents. Why isn’t he an American hero? When revolution broke out, Garden sided with the mother country. Bad call. The new regime confiscated his property, and he was forced to flee to Britain.
Some genera were named for American statesmen and explorers. Joel Poinsett collected a striking red-bracted euphorbia while serving as the first U.S. minister to Mexico; meet the poinsettia. Meriwether Lewis has the lewisias, also known as bitter roots, and William Clark the clarkias, mostly pink-flowering annuals. Thomas Jefferson entrusted the seeds they brought back from the West to a horticulturist named Bernard McMahon, author of “The American Gardener’s Calendar”; the mahonias (“Oregon grape”) bear his name.
The Pathfinder
Fremontodendron, the showy yellow-flowered shrub better known as flannelbush, is named for the explorer/soldier/politician John C. Fremont, who was pretty showy himself. He collected the plant near Sutter’s Fort in the spring of 1846 and sent specimens back to the brand-new Smithsonian. Fremont, who encouraged people to call him the Pathfinder, was then near the beginning of a checkered career.
He was later court-martialed for insubordination during the Mexican War, made an unsuccessful bid for the White House as an antislavery Republican, led a disastrous expedition to the Rockies (cannibalism was rumored) and was relieved of his Civil War command by Abraham Lincoln.
“God and events were against Fremont,” historian Bernard DeVoto wrote in “The Year of Decision: 1846.” “He tried to be a great man, but something always happened.” His namesake is a splendid plant, though.
Joe Eaton and Ron Sullivan are Berkeley freelance writers and naturalists. This article was written for the San Francisco Chronicle.