Names:
Botanical Names
and
Common Names
Plant Identification Index 
Waddell's What's New! page
The problem: Common names for plants are different depending where you live!
The common name is the name most often used in casual conversations. It is the name you learn as a little kid when someone points out a flower to you and says "See the pretty daisy". That means if you lived in Germany the common name you would use is Ganseblumchen! And if you learned the flower names in France it would be Paquerette.
Then what happens if a person from Manchester tries to tell someone from China about the bouquet of daisies they picked? Unless the person in China spoke English it would be tough.... because while tranlating dictionaries give you the words like "bouquet" and "picked" they do not list many specialty words, like the names of flowers. What about scientists? People in the sciences don't want ANY confusion about what they are talking about, it could mean the difference between life and death sometimes!
The solution: Assign every plant a unique name that people all over the planet agree to use.
And that unique name is called the botanical name.
Who gets to name a plant?
You do!...if you are the first person to discover it and notify the scientific community.
Can I name it anything I want?!!
Yes and No....Some parts of the name are automatically assigned to the plant because it is part of a known group of plants. But one part of the name is unique to your discovery, and that is the part you would be allowed to pick.
Just think, whatever you choose will be used by everyone on the planet until the end of time...or the end of this system, whichever comes first.You would think people would be very serious about their choice of names, wouldn't you?
Most of the time they are, naming the plant after a respected teacher or colleague, their wife/husband or child, or a special feature of the plant, like its color or feel.But sometimes the names have hidden and not so hidden jokes in them. Sometimes the names are even rude! I will find some examples of the joke names to put here later...you can find the rude ones yourself (when you are over 18).
A brief explanation of how a botanical name is constructed:
A botanical name of a plant specie has two parts.
The flower above has the botanical name Lychnis coronaria. Lychnis is the genus name that you have nothing to do with picking. Coronaria is the specie name which you do get to pick!As you can see the name has two basic parts. That is why it is called a binomial system. ("Bi" means two, and "nomial" refers to names.)
Brief History: The binomial system was established in 1753, which you will simply have to believe me when I say, is not a long time ago. Before then plant names could be very confusing! Remember the people then had no telephones and often poor letter sending choices. What if two people discovered the same plant but didn't know it! How could they know it!? ...especially if they lived far away from each other. They would both name the plant. Back then plant names sort of described the plant. If the plant was good as a medicine the word "wort" might be part of the name. (Did you know the tomato was called a Love Apple around the 1600s?) It was getting very confusing.
Anyway, as more and more people began to communicate with each other the botanists and scientists realized they had a mess on their hands. And as more and more plants were discovered and named by the explorers of the globe they knew something had to be done. There were starts at systems to cure the problem, but the one that finally did the job was perfected by Carl Linnaeus in 1753 in Sweden. Not everyone liked his system but it "felt right" and it was adopted as THE system of naming.
Think what was happening here in Connecticut around then! We were a thriving colony, with the people beginning to be really discontented with England as our ruler. Mint had just been imported into Connecticut to develop as a cash crop. It was an active and intellectually stimulating time. Ben Franklin was running around Pennsylvania being brilliant, doing experiments. Taxes were beginning to really bug people.
here to learn about what an herbarium is, and to see some of the pressed plant specimens belonging to Carl Linnaeus himself!
Why do the names look like they are written in Latin?
In 1753 it was assumed that most educated people, no matter what their native language, knew and were used to Latin grammer. That is why Latin words or Greek words that have been Latinized are used. Botanists even used to Latinize their given names, for instance Carl became Carolus I think.
Why is the first name, the generic name, capitalized and the second name, the specific epithet, not?
Just because...
If I develop a beautiful rose and want to name it after my mom, can I?
Absolutely! When you don't discover a plant but you do breed it to look different than most of its specie, or maybe you just luck out and find a mutant, then you do get to add a cultivar name.
The cultivar name is the fancy name you usually see when people are trying to sell you something. Pretend you had developed a Rosa rugosa like we have in our Schoolyard Habitat to have lovely pink stripes in a white petal....and you want to name it after your mom. You can't change the Rosa rugosa botanical name. You can add on the cultivar name of your choice after the botanical name. The rules say you have to put your cultivar name in quotes. So, if you named it after your mom and her name was Madeline the flower you developed would be written Rosa rugosa "Madeline".
Want to look at the big picture?
In order to understand what is going on in the world you have to be capable of comparing things.
Just like when a collector of baseball cards stores a collection he/she arranges the cards into leagues, then teams, then perhaps the position the player has...and they also have to note the year.They could arrange it so all the guys named Bob were together in one pile... but that makes it real hard to see if you have all the players for that team for that year. (What is the most commonly found first name among baseball players?)
The same sort of problem exists for scientists. They need to classify things to "store" them logically near related things. That makes it easier to compare them and note the differences and similarities.
For instance,what if you know that a certain mold produces a chemical that will save your life! That is a great discovery and it could save millions of other peoples lives too. If you also knew other molds that were related to, but slightly different than, the first miracle mold, wouldn't you think it should be investigated? Maybe it will produce a chemical that is useful as well and you will be famous! Having things sorted into groups just makes all kinds of things easier or possible at all.
The entire globe has agreed on a method to sort all things. It isn't perfect, and the scientific community may add a bit in the future that will take advantage of new technologies (like DNA when sorting things).
The basic hierarchy is as follows, starting at the top with the most general and working down to the specific.
Kingdom
Phylum
Class
Order
Family
Genus
Species
If we use you as an example to fill in the blanks, here is your description as a scientist would list it.
kingdom: Animalia (Metazoa)
phylum : Chordata
subphylum : Vertebrata
class : Mammalia
subclass : Eutheria
order : Primates
suborder : Anthropoidea
family : Hominidae
genus : Homo
species : sapiens
