I thought I would give you all a simple lesson on how plants are named, as I am sure you have noticed whenever I post about plants I add in their scientific Latin names as well. The reason I try to do this is because many plants have lots of common names that can be misleading, but scientific names never are. Example of this might be confusing the red maple tree with a Japanese red maple. They are two completely different trees. A red maple (Acer rubrum), grows to be over 75 feet tall; and has green leaves in summer and foliage that turns red in the fall. the Japanese red maple (Acer pulmatum), has red leaves all year long and only grows up to 25 feet.
When using scientific names it helps people to understand their meanings and the names become interesting and become easier to learn. The best way to become familiar with them is to say them out loud whenever, you read the Latin name or see pictures of it in a seed catalog, or add it to your aquarium. Knowing the Latin names of plants and animals, makes it easy to order them from anywhere in the world; as it is a universal language. All use the same Latin names.
You might be wondering who invented this system of two-naming plants. It was a famous Swedish botanist, by the name of Linnaeus. He gave all plants just two Latin names as their scientific name.
The first name is known as the generic name; this is the plant's group name. All plants that have the same generic name are said to belong to the same genus. All plants with the same genus have similar characteristics and are closely related to each other more than they are to other members of anyother genus. The second name is the specific name. All plants with the same specific name belong to the same species. (The Latin meaning of species is "kind."
It also means that all plants of the same species have the same characteristics and will consistently produce plants of the same type. Even today where different plant species are subdivided into many varieties, and where one variety of a species resembles that of another variety, there are always one or two differences that stay the same and are inherited.
Example of this is the peach tree is known as (Prunus persica), and the nectarine tree is (Prunus persica var. nucipersica.) Other subdivisions are called cultivar (cv.). This term cultivar means a "cultivated variety." So if you remember that the generic name is a noun and the species name is a adjective, it will help you remember them easier.
Some generic names were the names of early botanists. The (Buddleia), was named in the memory of Adam Buddle. Other common generic names are Chrysanthemum (mum) or Pinus (Pine), Pelargonium (Geranium) or Hibiscus (mallow).
