Latin for Buddy…

Posted: April 8, 2006 at 4:48 pm by John

We took advantage of some rare sunshine this afternoon to add some new plants to the garden. I’m terrible at remembering the names of plants…fortunately, Jeff is much better. But today, I saved a couple of the plant names to show off. So, first off, an easy latin quiz for Buddy, a.k.a. Mr. Horticulture.

Here are three of several new plants. Let’s letter them A, B, and C in order. Their latin names are in the following list:

Juncas spiralis
Sedum album athoum
Acorus gramineus ogon

Answers at the end.

And here are some of the new succulents we added today. Its amazing how after 50+ different varieties in our succulent garden already, that we can sill find cool new ones.

Oh, and the answers: A-2, B-1, and C-3.

3 Comments for Latin for Buddy…

Buddy

OK, I really like this post, but the horticulturalist and teacher in me can’t resist.

Kudos for using the Latin names, but there are some rules if you are going to use them properly 🙂 There is actually an International Congress dedicated to such details.

The genus and specific epithet are always either underlined or italicized. You should also include the Botanical Authority for good measure. Also varieties are also italicized or underlined, but cultivars are not. Instead they are capitalized and put in single quotes.

So for example:

Sedum album althoum should be:

Sedum album L. ‘Althoum’

L is for you guessed it. Linnaeus, Carolus Linnaeus or Carl von Linne’ these guys who thought they were smart back in the day latinized their names. Glad that stopped Buddaeus Tignorus sounds awful. Well my compulsive teaching is finished 🙂

I really must get to San Francisco and see your garden. It sounds wonderful. You and Jeff have a great weekend in the garden. Since you like succulents you would be really fascinated by CAM photosynthesis, but I’ll bore you with that one another day!

Buddy

after all my preaching I misspelled ‘Athoum’ 🙂 time to have beer and call it a night!

BullBunky

Hmmm, well, I think that you should be a copy editor for the guys that print up the little plant sticks 🙂 But really I’m most upset that I missed an opportunity to use italics, which I love to thrown in occasionally.

Oh, and I forgot that its Dr. Horticulture!