Plants have Latin names due to the genus and species system of naming plants developed by famed Swedish botanist, Carolus Linnaeus. Below is a statue of old Carl at the Linnaeus Teaching Gardens ...

You say klem-AT-is. I say KLEM-a-tis. Some say Latin is a dead language. But in the realm of horticulture, it’s not just alive, but kicking. Taxonomy, the science of classification, relies ...

Common names are nicknames; such as my friends calling me Robb. They express familiarity. On the other hand, if I had ever been lost on a plant expedition in China, you can be sure that my mother ...

The use of Latin plant names can be confusing to a gardener, sometimes even intimidating. Latin words for the genus or species of a plant are descriptive terms used to describe a specific type of ...

What's in a name? Why do we need complicated botanical names and, in Latin? So that everyone knows exactly what plant is being discussed. What is wrong with just using common names? Simply put, the… ...

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service notes that insects (bees, wasps, moths, butterflies, flies, beetles) are the most common pollinators, but as many as 1,500 species of vertebrates such as birds ...

A plant’s Latin name is the only way to know for certain what you’ll be getting when you buy plants in the spring, as common names vary by region — but you have to know how to decode some of ...

There are some other tricky things about Latin names, too. If a man discovered the plant, it may have his last name in italics and -ii or just -i added to it. For women, you might see -ae ...

Zoologists dropped the Latin description rule years ago, though botanists point out that while there are only about 5,000 species of mammals on the planet, there are at least 400,000 plant species.

Each plant has only one official Latin name, and it is used universally across America and around the world. It’s time to make an effort to stop avoiding Latin names.

Mind your language - find out what those Latin plant names actually mean Echinacea purpurea, the coneflower. Picture: Thinkstock/PA. . How much can you tell about a plant from its name?

Moore says the reference on every botanist’s desk is “Botanical Latin” by William T. Stearn (Timber Press, 560 pages, $29.95), who also wrote “Stearn’s Dictionary of Plant Names for ...