As you might already know, Latin can be quite useful to gardeners.  Plants have two Latin names, called Botanical Nomenclature, even though many gardeners use the common names for their plants…The first part of the name is the genus to which it belongs.  An example, the genus of Coneflower is  Echinacea. The second name is the “specific epithet” which modifies the first name…in other words, it might tell the color, the location where it was found , the size, or sometimes the person who discovered it, etc.  So Echinacea purpura will be the genus Echinacea and the color of the native plant was purple. The first name is always capitalized and the second is always small letters. The name is either underlined or italicized. Together they form the species.

The name of the variety /or cultivar will be in single quotes ie. Achillea millefolium ‘Summerwine’. ’The common name Yarrow may be in enclosed in brackets.

When you go into a nursery to buy your plants, almost all nurseries will stock the plant according to the Latin name…not the common name.  So under the letter “A”, will be Achillea, even though you call it Yarrow.  It helps to know the Latin names so that you can go straight to the section where your plant is, instead of searching thru all the aisles. The catalogues will also list according to the Latin name.

A few specific epithets (modifiers) you might see are: alba (white), coccineus (red), aureus (gold), niger (black), cyanea (blue), humilis (low), sinensis (Chinese), mollis (soft hairs), pumulis (drawf), vulgaris (common)and repens (creeping), folius (leaves), florus (flowers), cautis (stem)

This amazing standardization called Binomial Nomenclature for plants, animals and minerals, was created by Carl Linnaeus in the 1750’s, and has been used by scientists and gardeners ever since.