Plant Botanical Names

People often laugh at the complicated scientific names that are given to plants and animals. Sometimes they really are funny, for example Rhododendron goodenoughii, a plant which comes from Goodenough Island in Papua. The island itself was actually named after somebody called Goodenough. Joking aside, the use of any sort of a name is to avoid the need for using cumbersome descriptive phrases.

Scientists use the binomial system of nomenclature, which was developed by the Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus. In the binomial system, every living thing is given a two word name. Those names are usually derived from Latin, which was the one language of learning throughout Europe when this method of naming and classification was introduced. The first part of the name refers to a group, or genus, and the second part refers to a specific member of the group, or the species. As an example, the domestic dog’s scientific name is Canis familiaris. Canis is the Latin word for dog, and familiaris is the Latin word for familiar. The dog’s near relative, the wolf, belongs to the same group or genus, Canis. However it has its own species name, lupus, which is the Latin word for wolf. Scientific names often refer to a characteristic of the plant or animal being named, for example the species name of the domestic cat is catus, which means clever.

Plants and animals are also frequently named after people, as in Sir Joseph Banks and Banksia, George Camel and Camellia or Pierre Magnol and Magnolia. A suggestion has even been made that people could pay to have living things named after them, to help with funding for scientific research! Seriously though, if you use scientific names there can be no confusion about which plant or animal you mean, no matter which country you live in, or what language you speak.

Book mentioned

Up the Garden Path by Thelwell, ISBN 0 7493 0949 0