How to decipher the Latin names you see on plants at the nursery

My column this week honors a man who spoke Latin to me when I was still learning to count to 10. He was my dad. My best friend for the first decades of my life. I was by his bed as he died 51 years ago this week and all I could say was, “I love you, Dad. Thanks for being my dad.”

I was adopted during WWII. My dad didn’t inherit me. He chose me. After 17 years of childless marriage, he and mom put in the papers and then their phone rang out in Alpine to tell them their son had been born way down in San Antonio. He taught botany at Sul Ross State Teachers College. When I was 2, we moved to College Station where my dad co-founded the Range and Forestry Department at Texas A&M. His brother, my uncle John, was also a botanist teaching plant taxonomy at A&M. All I heard at Thanksgiving dinners was Latin this and Latin that. And I loved it. My mom was a teacher. My aunt was a teacher. I was surrounded by born teachers.

My dad taught me how to garden. He taught me how to use a paintbrush and how to use a hammer and saw. He taught me how to treat people. I never saw my dad angry, yet he was the one who gave me my two spankings (well deserved, I might add). I’d like to hope that he taught me how to be a father, and for that I think about him every single day of my life.

But the reason I’ve called this meeting of our group here today is to talk about plant names and what my dad taught me about Latin, and how you can quickly decipher the code if you know some of the buzzwords. Those words will teach you a lot.

Each plant that we grow has a genus and species. This short course in names will focus on the latter. Species names can identify places of origin, colors of foliage, flowers, or fruit, persons who discovered the plants, odd features of the plants, “looks like” attributions, and more. Let’s examine a few.

Places of origin. Why not start here? When we see texensis that’s going to tell us that plant is from Texas. Like Lupinus texensis, our wonderful Texas bluebonnet.

Prunus mexicana is Mexican plum, and Cercis canadensis is eastern redbud, native as far north as, well, you guessed it. Other common species names are virginiana (live oak is Quercus virginiana), americana (a hometown hero), and orientalis, meaning “from the East.”

Two of the most common “place” names among species are japonica (from Japan) and sinensis or chinensis (from China). Those regions are rich with species adapted to American gardens.

Colors of foliage, flowers, or fruit. There are as many words here as there are colors, but some of the prime ones that pop up are alba and albus (white), nigra or nigrum (black), rubra or rubrum (red), rosea (pink), lutea or luteum (yellow), violacea (violet), purpurea (purple), viridis (green), argentea (silvery), and aurea (golden).

Veteran gardeners will see these words so often they’ll become second nature.

Persons who discovered the plant. This is a fun one. You can really tell how many miles some of these people walked while seeking the plants named in their honor. People like Thomas Drummond, famed Scottish plant explorer who came down from the Canadian Rockies, through the Rocky Mountains of the American West, through New Orleans, Galveston, East Texas, the Brazos River

Bottom and beyond. More than 100 species carry the name drummondii in honor of his first finding them as he walked and collected.

Similarly, you’ll see the name lindheimeri assigned to plants found and attributed to Ferdinand Lindheimer, “The Father of Texas Botany.”

Years ago, I was shown a pressed plant specimen of a species first collected by my father Omer E. Sperry in the 1930s in Brewster County (I believe specifically in what became Big Bend National Park). I was speaking at the Botanical Research Institute of Texas (BRIT) at the old Downtown Fort Worth location. That milkweed’s scientific name was Asclepias sperryi.

Specific features of the plant. These are useful words that show up frequently in plants’ scientific names. They give you a head start on knowing what to expect.

Relative to size of plant parts, microphylla means “small-leafed,” while macrophylla says it has large leaves. The word pumila describes a dwarf plant, but nana is very dwarf. You can probably figure out the meanings of gigantea and grandiflora without my help.

As to growth habit, procumbens is used with trailing plants, while repens refers to a plant that literally creeps along the ground. An upright plant is erecta while a weeping plant is pendula.

Leaf shapes are easy to figure. What configuration would you assign to the species word lanceolata? (Lance-shaped.) How about cordata? (Heart-shaped.) And rotundifolia? (Round.) Or trifoliata (3-leafed, like poison ivy.) Then you have serrata (serrated, like a hacksaw blade), or glabra (smooth), or tomentosa (fuzzy).

Two very useful words: decidua (deciduous) and sempervirens (evergreen).

Looks-like names. This list is shorter, and it’s somewhat negotiable. I may think that something looks like a waxleaf ligustrum and you may think it looks like weeping fig. I actually think those two plants, from twig samples, look very similar, but taxonomists must not agree. They’re not even distantly related

However, you have oakleaf hydrangeas with a species name that pulls in the genus used by the oaks Hydrangea quercifolia. Or holly oak Quercus ilex. But enough of that.

Other fun and telling words. I’ll wrap it up with a few of these. Lantana horrida (native Texas lantana) gets its species name from its bristly leaf surfaces. If you’ve ever handled the plant, you understand. The species name spinosa needs no explanation. The name somniferum means “sleep-inducing,” while officinalis tells us a plant is used medicinally.

If you’ve read clear to the end of this my dad would be proud of you. I hope he’d be equally satisfied with my portrayal of Latin names as descriptors of the plants we know and love.