Background to Plant-name Guide

Lectures, Seminars & Internet Workshops by John B. Van Sickle [e-mail]

A Gardener-Friendly Guide to Scientific Names of Plants

The scientific names that botanists assign to plants cause
grief for many gardeners.
Learning the nomenclature cold can
challenge even professionals.
TO GET (ENJOY, RECALL, EMPLOY) BOTANICAL NAMES
This guide offers practical steps toward greater familiarity & ease with complex names, using methods
developed by experience as
a teacher of vocabulary building
& a gardener.

Daphne turns into laurel (bay) [Pollaiuolo]

Laurus nobilis
[medicinal lore]

Illustrated with
Digital Images & Keys to
Internet
Resources

Some old plant names come with myths about their origin. So the nymph Daphne was said to have escaped Apollo bent on rape through turning into the laurel (bay): painted by Pollaiulo after the version by the Roman poet Ovid.

Many components of botanical names recur repeatedly in various combinations. Some describe the parts of plants or special qualities such as color, size, or form.

Dicentra
spectabilis
alba

Many names characterize one plant by comparing it with another. These recurrent descriptive terms, once identified & defined, become aids to memory, enjoyment & use.
Other names encode histories of humanity's intense & diverse interest in plants from the dawn of civilization down. Many still reflect traditional lore gathered in the ancient, urgent, & ingenious search for plant uses (for food, healing, & supernatural power) as well as esthetic pleasure & enhanced prestige.
Unlike standard lessons that impose lists to memorize by rote,
the present Method of Analysis
focuses on the basic structure, meaning, & history of botanical names,
empowering gardeners by giving them tools
to master any name they particularly want to explore & use.

First designed for the
Horticultural Alliance of the Hamptons & tested again with the
Master Gardeners of Suffolk Country,
the method has proved effective for a wide spectrum of gardeners & horticulturalists, from amateur to professional.
The method begins by dividing to conquer.
It demonstrates that all botanical names can be broken down by analysis into component parts. These components, then, can be made to reveal their encoded meanings & stories & thus become easier to enjoy, remember, & employ.

Datura stramonium
[Jamestown aka Jimson weed]

Others are meant as monuments to plant hunters & developers as well as to their patrons & friends. They invite historical inquiry & may inspire us to marvel, celebrate or shudder on learning of the devotion, folly, sacrifice, & derring-do of the heroes, villains, almost saints commemorated.

John B. Van Sickle teaches Classics & Comparative Literature in the City University of New York & gardens avidly in the shade of oak, hickory, sassafras, shad & beech in The Springs (East Hampton).
He specializes in the twin tradition of epic & pastoral, from Homer down through Theocritus, Virgil, Spenser, Milton, Frost, to the contemporary pastoral epic, Omeros, by Derek Walcott, who stitches into in his work an astonishing range of botanical lore.
E-mail:jvsickle@brooklyn.cuny.edu.