American Nurseryman -Jan 2012

Vivat Linnaeus Botanical Latin may seem daunting at times but before a certain Swedish botanist came along nomenclature was a nightmare We have Carl Linnaeus to thank for organizing clarifying and making plant names just a bit easier to handle T he beginning of wisdom is knowing things by their right name This saying from the Chinese philosopher Krishtalka is a good lead in to this discussion of how Carl Linnaeus has helped horticulture Linnaeus gave us the fi rst organized system of Latin binomials for naming living organisms Before you take his name in vain or in the vein of Latin is a language as dead as dead can be fi rst it killed the Romans and now its killing me think of how it was before Linnaeus Linnaeus to the rescue The system of Carl Linnaeus laid out in Systema Plantarum The Species of Plants in 1753 actually helped reduce confusion At the time Latin was used as the universal language of science As Michael Dirr points out in his Manual of Woody Landscape Plants even today there are more than 245 names for the white water lily Nymphaea alba in the English Dutch German and French languages alone All for one single plant Nymphaea alba named in fact by Linnaeus So the use of Latin helped to alleviate the confusion between for example French and English botanists and subsequently horticulturists Usage of an offi cial two part name then helped reduce the tangle of words and the written form of logorrhea that existed up until 1753 Consider for example the briar rose which Linnaeus named Rosa canina Clean clear simple Prior to Linnaeus intervention though the plant was described by some as Rosa sylvestris inodora seu canina or by others as Rosa sylvestris alba cum rubore folio glabro We think you can agree that the system of Linnaeus was easier to use It takes two Linnaeus also arranged species and genera groups of related species into a hierarchical system with bigger groups of plants in classes and orders and kingdoms such as the Plant Kingdom and Animal Kingdom At the core of the system is the idea species reproductively isolated populations of organisms Species are represented by a Latin binomial a two part Latin name comprising the genus name with the fi rst letter capitalized and the specifi c epithet with the fi rst letter not capitalized Both parts of the name are italicized or underlined Lets look at a few simple examples Quercus is the genus for oak Quercus alba is the Latin binomial for the species we also know as white oak the alba part of the name means white Populus alba then is the white poplar Quercus alba white oak and Quercus palustris pin oak The system works for animals as well Agrilus planipennis is the emerald ash borer Agrilus anxius is the bronze birch borer and Homo sapiens is us the species known as human beings None of these species will mate with each other they are reproductively isolated from each other Occasionally nature is a bit messy of course Acer rubrum or red maple is considered to be a good species by plant classifi ers and so is Acer saccharinum the silver maple Nevertheless as horticulturists we know that sometimes these two species do indeed hybridize and we know these as Freeman maples designated either as Acer rubrum Acer saccharinum or as Acer freemanii Popular types of Freeman maples include Acer freemanii Autumn Blaze and Acer freemanii Armstrong Its all relative Biologically related yet reproductively isolated species such as red maple Acer rubrum and Japanese maple Acer palmatum are in the genus Acer Again a genus is a group of related species Related genera were later put into a new classifi cation category known as a family not described by Linnaeus in 1753 For example the rose family Rosaceae includes such related genera as Rosa rose apple Malus mountainash Sorbus hawthorn Crataegus and many others Knowing this helps with plant problem diagnostics and infectious disease control For example bacterial fi reblight occurs only on genera in the rose family This information of relatedness also comes in handy for example when you consider early host studies conducted once the emerald ash borer became a problem in North America Plants in the olive family Oleaceae include such genera as Forsythia Syringa lilac Chionanthus fringetree several others and Fraxinus the true ashes The fi rst place to check to see if the emerald ash borer Agrilus planipennis had a broader host range was to do feeding studies on By Jim Chatfi eld and Erik Draper Photo by Kathy Smith OSU Sweetgum Liquidambar styracifl ua foliage and fruit The Latin name refers to the amber colored chewy gum that can be extracted from the stems Swedish botanist and father of the binomial system Carl Linnaeus Background image Yury Shirokov Dreamstime com 26 JANUARY 2012 American Nurseryman www amerinursery com