The Origins of Plant Names
| Published: 8th March 2008 15:37 |
The Origins of Plant Names
Have you ever looked at the sometimes grand-sounding botanical names of plants and wondered where and why they have originated?
Firstly, let us look at the reasons for the botanical names.
A plant may have a common name and share this with several others. An example of this is ‘Bachelor's Buttons', which is a wild plant, a plant for the herbaceous border and a shrub - all different types of plant. Add to this that plants had names in different languages and this became a recipe for confusion.
Enter Dr. Carl Linnaeus, a Swedish botanist born in 1707, who began to transform the botanical naming of plants. Linnaeus's system of naming plants has been the inspiration for generations of taxonomists - scientists who are charged with the responsibility of finding a common form of naming and describing plants. This became known as the ‘binomial' system.
It would be easy to become ‘bogged down' in writing reams about Linnaeus but suffice to say at this stage that his binomial system has formed the basis for much of the naming of plants.
For the curious amongst you, it may be helpful to find out more about Linnaeus by going to the website www.ucmp.edu/history/linnaeus, so happy hunting!
Since Linnaeus, many plants have been named after people or places and we shall endeavour to tell a little about the characters whose names have formed the basis of plant naming over the years. These may be botanists, landscape gardeners, plant hunters or even the son/daughter/nephew/niece/best friend of the person naming the plant!
Look out for details of the backgrounds of plants in the forthcoming articles. I hope that you will enjoy reading about them!
Article by Martin Horne ©
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