It used to be said that Easter Monday (6th April this year) was the beginning of the gardening year, when “everyone” would be out buying plants feverishly and garden centres and nurseries would do a roaring trade. Most “real” gardeners will have been hard at work for several weeks by then, and if you have a greenhouse or grow flowers or vegetables from seed you never really stop, but still …
As well as trailing around trying to find just the right plant for this or that place in our gardens, one thing we all need to cope with is plant names, which can be a continual source of frustration and confusion, often combined with “what on Earth!”. Latin, let alone Greek, has almost completely died out in British schools, so coming across a label inscribed “Ophiopogon planiscapus nigrescens” might well be enough to put anyone off horticulture for life. Ophis and pogon are Greek words, meaning snake and beard respectively; planis and scapus are Latin for “flattened scape (stalk)” and nigrescens describes the black(-ish) foliage. Such a mixture of Latin and Greek is typical of botanical names, though may grate on a Classicist.
It does seem like rather a lot of name for a plant about two inches tall with little lilac flowers late in the season that increase its stature to all of six inches. Its black colouring made it all the rage a few years back with gardeners who think themselves fashionable.
“Why not use its English name”, I hear you cry? Why not, indeed, but which one? Do you prefer “Lilyturf” (it’s neither a lily nor a grass), “Black Mondo Grass” (what is “mondo”, other than the Italian for “world”?), or “Black Dragon”? It hails from Japan, where it is called “ryu-no-hi-ge”, meaning “snake’s beard” (like the Greek), but the French seem more interested in the little bluish-purplish berries that follow its flowers, calling the plant “Herbe aux Turquoises”.
Even within the Anglophone gardening fraternity/sorority English names don’t always carry across the Atlantic: Bergamot (UK) is “Oswego Tea” (and other things) in the USA, their “Fireweed” is our Rosebay Willow Herb; American gardeners really seem to dislike using Latin, insisting on “Cohosh” for “Cimicifuga”, sometimes called Baneberry in this country, though few gardeners know that name. It has another: “Bugbane”, which relates directly to the Latin one, translated as “bed bug repeller”.
This last is also an example of what the botanical powers-that-be seem fond, sometimes rather too fond, of: changing the Latin name for a whole genus (species group) of plants. Though they have no legally enforceable powers, the International Botanic Congress meets every few years to decide whether plants need to be shifted about, often due to complex scientific processes like DNA analysis, which can result in plants once split off from one another being put back together. Cimicifuga now again resides with Actaea, where the originator of plant taxonomy, Carl Linnaeus, put it in his Species Plantarum of 1753.
“These are unusual plants, why should I worry?” you may ask. Perhaps, but what about Michaelmas Daisies? Almost ubiquitous, but botanists have had a field day with them in recent years. Those originating in America, often called “New England” or “New York” Asters, are now in a separate genus with a real mouthful of a name: “Symphyotrichum” (from the Greek words sumphuo, meaning “ grow together”, and thrix (bristle), which refers to hair-like structures at the base of the florets found in some species – what odd criteria for naming a plant!) Some other American asters are now called Eurybia, Doellingeria, or Ionactis, which hardly roll off the tongue either. “Aster” is now “officially” only used for those genii (yes, really) originating in Eurasia. There is a native British aster, a biennial called the “Sea Aster”, now placed in a genus all of its own, “Tripoleum”. One might well ask why, as it’s a native of this country, its species name is “pannonicum”, “from Pannonia”, roughly the equivalent of present-day Hungary? Incidentally, the popular annual “China Aster” is yet another genus, “Callistephus”, meaning “beautiful crown”, which is at least accurately descriptive of the flowers, and they are native to China (as well as Korea and parts of Mongolia).
I think I have now reached linguistic overload, but will sign off with another “botanic consolidation”, and one of extraordinary dimensions. The sage family is no longer just the herb sage, the bright red annual bedding plant, and, more recently, increasingly popular herbaceous and (sub-)shrubby forms, now enjoying our warming climate. “Salvia” now includes Rosemary (!), and the whole process has resulted in the reclassification of over 700 plant species. I am determined not to think about this …