Probaby the reason some gardens sprout plant markers.

It's a shame a tiny bit of Latin or Greek knowledge has been replaced by common names and those even dumbed down further with ditzy cultivar naming. Look at Hosta, botanical name Hosta (and closely since so many of them look alike) and the tens of thousands of meaningless cultivar names. Same with good old hemerocallis. Hemerocallis comes from the Greek words ἡμέÏα (hÄmera) "day" and καλÏÏ (kalos) "beautiful". Why give something beautiful a name like "Exploded Pumpkin"?

Doesn't really answer your query. I'm not a plant collector, no do I engage in propagation, so I don't need tags or spending hours with an Excel spreadsheet. I have inherited gardens so I have some no ids - which in no way diminishes my enjoyment of them. I still have most of my faculties and can spot a hemerocallis or a peony or a hosta from across the yard.

I'm a plant tag reader at garden centers and nurseries. If it's something new, I might keep the pot tag in the garage for a year or two. For me, gardening is in the act of doing, not cataloging. If I were a plant collector I'd change my tune and probably mail order the expensive permanent markers - I wouldn't be happy cutting old Venetian blinds apart and writing on them with a Sharpie.

In my small high school, French class filled up pretty quick so I was stuck with a dozen 'overflow' kids in Latin class. We learned this poem:

Latin is a dead language
It's plain enough to see
It killed off all the Romans
And now it's killing me

In spite of myself, I learned the language and could both read it & write it by the end of the school year. It stuck with me through medical terminology in college & in my career. Now when I learn a plant's botanical name, I find it easier to remember than the common names. Those often elude me!

mindy - isn't there also one named helenium? I can remember sunflower/helianthus no problem but the others make me scratch my head too.

Waaaaay back in my university days, when we had to learn thousands of plant binomials and families, we were urged to use as many parts of our brain as possible to help memorize the names. So, I wrote wrote them down over and over, and I said them out loud over and over. I also quizzed myself. I think that saying the name out loud was the biggest help.

And the more Latin names you learn, the easier it becomes. I vividly remember being intimidated by the first list of plants in my woody ornamentals class (for example), but not being phased at all as the class progressed.

Spend some time learning the name of the family a plant belongs to, too. Family characteristics can often (not always) be a very helpful identifying feature. Plants within the same family can often have some very similar characteristics or cultural needs.

When I became the teacher instead of the pupil, I also spent some time in each class in the pronunciation of the names....we all said them out loud. They all agreed that it was a huge help to them.

I see learning the plant names as a mental challenge and a way of keeping my brain young. I set "goals" for myself, such as learning the name of every plant I grow and what's growing in the yard. Also label almost all seed packets, plant tags, and winter-sowing containers with the scientific name. Repetition helps a lot and it does get easier the more names you learn.

It's worth the effort, it helps to figure out the difference between species, and what plants are native to where in the world. Also it's fun when I visit a foreign plant website and can't read hardly a word of the website, but can recognize a botanical name and the plant!

Although my spelling is usually good, have no idea how to prounounce most of them. 8-/

One of my gardening friends always uses the botanical names when discussing plants which helped me when I was first learning them. I now use the botanincal names myself but will also add the common name when discussing with others. I find unless I am talking with my serious gardening friends most people don't care about the botanical names and are a bit disdainful of those using them.

Since posting on garden forums using the latin names helps identify the plant as many different plants have the same common name. Also helps when collecting and trading seeds.

I agree with rhizo that it gets easier.

As an older gardener (mid60s) its not that I have forgotten the names, I just can't always access the name when needed. I don't misidentify a plant, the name just gets "lost" for a time and found/accessed again later.

I have an easier time remembering the latin names these days than the common ones. Like Mnwsgal, my non-gardening friends do not much appreciate my using latin names. The other day I had to say that "gold-yellow daisy like thing" for a Rudbeckia, since I could not remember Black-eyed Susan & did not want to say Rudbeckia. Weird eh?? Sort of like going into the backyard with snips and a small bucket of water & forgetting which flowers you wanted to cut, then getting side-tracked deadheading, & splashing yourself dropping the heavy lily tops into the bucket.

I was once told I was a snob for using botanical names by a former gardening friend. I LOL'd and moved on to others who are less judgmental. Striving to learn more about your passion/hobby should be a plus. I'd like to say I'm certainly not a purist about such things. There are some botanical names that are just too hard to pronounce by sight alone (thinking of the different "ice plants" names in particular). But rhymes help me remember a few plants that might otherwise trip me up. As in: Liriope rhymes with Calliope, Euyonomous rhymes with Anonymous, and hilly Agnus rhymes with Eleagnus... Good post.... Maryl

Have you all seen this pronunciation guide from Fine Gardening? It's a good one.

Here is a link that might be useful: Click here

For most people, associating a visual stimulus with a word and reinforcing with repetition is the best way to learn - just like we all learned language as a child (and why I struggled horribly with foreign language in college but did just fine using Rosetta stone, but I digress...).

If you're struggling with a plant name, *every time* you see the plant/pass by it in the garden, mentally say the name to yourself. If you can't remember, think about it for a minute before moving on, hopefully it will come to you - use that visual cue and search your memory banks, it's in there somewhere!

If you still can't remember, look it up later - amazing how things forgotten and then researched later are committed to memory (along the lines of "you learn best from your mistakes").

Awesome site! I can't tell you how many names I thought I was pronouncing right and wasn't lol! Maybe I'll keep it on hand under favorites until I can say them right lol!

Cathy

I just read a book called Four Hour Chef where the author interviews some world record holders for memorization. These guys can remember the order of several decks of cards just by flipping through them once. To summarize their technique, they translate the data into a form that our brains are better at remembering, images. It gets really interesting when you can use one image to remember multiple pieces of data. Here's an example...

Persicaria is the latin name for smartweed which has a long skinny stem with pink flowers on it. It almost looks like a long pink stick of these tiny flowers. So to remember this genus name, I just think of someone slinging a purse on a long pink stick over their shoulder. Purse-carry-a. Sounds REALLY stupid but I bet you will remember that. I suppose if you wanted to remember that it was also smart weed, you may imagine Albert Einstein carrying the purse over his shoulder with a pink stick.

Another examples is the chinese artichoke, stachys affinis. The long edible root has these deep ribs along the whole length. This ones a stretch but I imagine a stack of fins piled up one on top of another creating a tall tower. STACKys aFINis. Still stupid but it works really well for me.

Here is a confession. I am just a lowly peasant when it comes to names. I grow mainly natives and I like the common names because I find them descriptive, suggestive of folk lore or medicinal uses and easy to remember due to their simplistic and visually descriptive nature. If I need a botanical name to identify a specific plant because someone wants to find seeds, a retail source or something like that, I use the internet and at least I get the spelling down right unless I make a type-o. I do have a thing about bad spelling like some people have a thing about using correct botanical names at all times. We all have our quirks. If its a plant I grow or am interested in I usually have seen it enough times to have it in garbled form in my head, at least enough to look it up.

I like plants named after the early naturalists like Charles Parry and George Englemann, those I remember because these stories are interesting and because I have an avid interest in history (but no interest in memorizing botanical names). Frankly the correct botanical names bore the heck out of me and I quickly get disinterested in posts that are full of lists of long, tedious botanical names of plants that don't conjure up anything visual for me. Surely, I'm not the only one and do we really have to remember them just because we like gardening? I don't think so. If someone needs a botanical name of one of my plants, 99.9% of the time I can look it up.

I like all your gizmos. Funny, the way i remember Helenium as Sneezeweed is the long E with an N that they both have. And i remember the word Epimedium with Epi (skin, above the skin)- medium.
mindy

I buy dirt from a woman out here in the hills 30 miles west of Austin and I said a botanical name and she called me Assiniae presumptivus on a couple of visits and I looked at her and said I was not trying to intimidate her and really it was a cheap way of sounding smart, but, in reality, I use both and the Latin came to my tongue first. I saw her this week and she has joined three online Plant ID groups and is reading "Botany in a Day" and really seeing the reasons for botanical names and has changed her tune big time. It is nice to see people willing to look at things in a new perspective at north of 60. We had a greg talk with lots of latter. No, she has not apologized for calling me names..

TX, if bad spelling irritates you, I must drive you nuts.

Bad spelling doesn't irritate me, it just stands out visually. I'm terrible at math but good with spelling. I get numbers wrong in ways that are embarrassing. Things like writing the wrong year on a check which I do all the time or leaving out zeros when talking about square feet or amounts of money when I get the numbers not just wrong but drastically wrong. I don't usually remember numbers like phone numbers etc. because I can't seem to keep numbers in my head but a word that is spelled wrong almost always jumps off the page.

I don't consider using botanical names as necessarily pretentious but I don't feel the need to memorize them and I do find the common names more interesting personally speaking. Actually, when talking to most people about plants, the common name is more often than not better for conversational purposes unless the other person is a plant geek or asks for a name because they want to get the plant, then its appropriate to be specific and if necessary, look it up. I mean, if someone came to casually look at my garden and was asking what this plant is or that plant is I do think it would sound grossly pretentious to start spouting off a lot of long winded botanical names which would leave most people not knowing anymore than they did before they asked and probably they'd wish they'd never asked in the first place.

This post was edited by TexasRanger10 on Tue, Nov 11, 14 at 4:32

duplicate

This post was edited by TexasRanger10 on Tue, Nov 11, 14 at 4:33

I LOVE words and enjoy learning more - as a child, I used to try to learn a new word every day. I often repeat humulus lupulus or betula pendula as a sort of little soothing mantra.....I enjoy the poetics of common names also - a kind of folk language and. while I recognise the virtues of the binomial system (as opposed to longwinded descriptors which were applied to plants (the plant with long, glaucous leaves and pendant roseate tepals etc. etc.), I do love the scatological, scandalous, sly euphemisms and mangled variations of common plant names.
If all else fails, a kind of rapid muttering suffices....and as an absolute last resort, when asked what such and such a plant is, confidently stating 'a viburnum' has got me out of trouble (sort of).
I have no truck whatsoever with the pronunciation police....and definitely revel in dialect, idioms, slang (even txtspk)....anything which reveals a subversive humour or witty trangression of norms.

I had use plant markers. Short term memory certainly doesn't improve with age. With brothers tape at least when a plant doesn't survive I can reuse applying a new one over the old tape. I save my tricks and paper logs for other matters. My plants are moved and changed to often for me to keep track of them. Doesn't help with memory skills but it works.
Had popsicle sticks and many other markers but raccoons babies loved to play with them. They never stayed where I placed them.

A dear friend recently introduced me as a gardener who not only knew the common names of plants but also the botanical ones. I didn't realize I did that but I guess from reading here and studying plant catalogs, I just picked it up.
I keep plant tags in a file so when I forget names (often) I just run into the house to check.

Learning the botanical names of plants is like learning a foreign language......once it is in the brain, it tends to stay there. And since I use that 'language' a lot, I don't seem to have trouble remembering. In fact, I can recall all sorts of obscure botanical names when pressed, which always amazes me. But like another poster, I have trouble with the common names......maybe because they are so fluid (multiple names for the same thing) and vary from location to location, but I also don't remember growing up with them. When my interest turned to plants, it was always the scientific/botanical name that caught my attention.

And a little like doing crossword puzzles, I am hoping remembering (and even adding to) my vocabulary of botanical names will keep my poor old aging brain from deteriorating too rapidly :-)

Interesting to read this thread 4 years later and I would have to say that repetition is still what works for me!

I read an article by Dr. Andrew Weil, who said learning a new language is one activity that slows mental decline. He said it's not necessary to master the language fluently, but it's the act of learning that keeps the brain young.

In addition to plant names, I have dabbled in learning the names of other species like butterflies, birds, and mammals. Mammal names seem simpler than plants and insects. Names like -

Felis catus - house cat
Rattus rattus - black rat
Bison bison - American bison - there's even a subspecies Bison bison bison!!

Much easier to remember! Haha

This post was edited by terrene on Tue, Nov 11, 14 at 19:43

Ditto your comment terrene. I continue to find myself identifying plants first by their botanical name followed by whatever common name is relevant. Over the years since this post originally appeared, I've found I most often identify plants first by their botanical name since anyone searching for a name is more likely to have success with that information than they otherwise might with a cultivar or common name.

I also confess that I find some of the botanical names kind of cool. Nipponanthemum nipponicum is the botanical name for Montauk daisy. Who'd a thunk? Euphorbia polychroma (a.k.a., cushion spurge) is another cool name. The cushion spurge I bought when my kids were in elementary school is still going strong. My kids are now in their 40's.

Just a couple of my faves...

Clematis viticella 'Purpurea Plena Elegans' (she's a beauty, too)!

Filipendula rubra 'Venusta'!

When I began gardening I learned the botanical names because it was the sure fire way to find the plants I wanted.

I find the less time I spend in the garden with the plants the more I have to pick my brain to remember some of their names--trying to remedy this!

I tell you, when (and if) you get into Plant Etymology - the origin of names, you can be fascinated from here til eternity! I actually own a book of this, and some winter i'm going to pour over it. But meanwhile, I have looked up many many many name origins over the years. Some I see over and over: wilsonii, davidii, kirilowii, all named for explorers and collectors.If you're a "history fan", you can't help but get pulled in. There are web sites for it too.

I love reading all of the posts here. What fun!
best,
mindy