No matter what your main gardening interest — be it growing vegetables, making your yard colorful with flowers, picking out just the right tree, or aspiring to have the most gorgeous roses on the block — chances are that you care most about the plants. Sure, gardening can also involve landscaping and lawn care or being able to grow your own food , or just having a great excuse to play in the dirt , but for most people, the plants make everything worthwhile. Of course, keeping your plants alive and making them look their best involves a lot of preparation. This article contains information on caring for your garden plants throughout.
Okay, yeah, I know, you already know you need to plan and prepare your soil to get your garden going, but you really just want to read about plants right now, right? In that case, the most basic explanations of the kinds of plants you may encounter in the world of gardening. In this article Series go into much more detail about the various types of plants, trees, bushes, and vines, but here I help you get a sense of how plants are similar and different — the first step in turning a brown thumb green. First, though, I explain a bit about names.
Playing the Name Game
What’s in a name? For gardeners, plenty. Gardening is a blend of horticulture and botany, common names and high science, and the names can get a bit confusing. Whether you’re looking at plant anatomy or simply want to know what to call a plant, understanding a bit about naming can help you wade through the aisles, ask better questions, and treat your plants right.
“Hello, my name is . . . ”:
Getting used to plant nomenclature Whenever you’re talking about plants, knowing how they’re named can help you avoid getting tangled up in the Latin. Generally, when looking for plants and flowers, you encounter two types of names — botanical and common. Read on for some info on how the naming system works, and then carpe diem — pluck the day!
Botanical names
The botanical name is the proper or scientific name of a plant. It consists of two parts: the genus name and the species name. The species name is kind of like your own first name (except it comes last in a plant’s botanical name).The genus name is similar to your family name (except in botanical names, it comes first). For example, in the plant name Hosta undulata, Hostais the genus name, and undulata is the species name. Hostadescribes an entiregenus of famous, mostly shade-loving plants named hostas, and undulate describes the type of hosta it is — a hosta with an undulating leaf shape. Sometimes the botanical name has a third name, right after the species name, known as the variety. A varietyis a member of the same plant species but looks different enough to warrant its own name, such as Rosa gallica var. officinalis.
Still another botanical name that sometimes comes up is the cultivar, or cultivated variety. Cultivars are usually named by the people who developed or discovered them, and they’re often maintained through cuttings, line-bred seed propagation, or tissue culture. In other words, they’re cultivated (humans grow, improve, and develop them). An example is Lychnis coronaria ‘Angel’s Blush.
Botanical names are more common with some types of plants than others. For instance, you frequently run into them with herbaceous plants, trees, and shrubs but much less so with roses, annuals, and vegetables. You can find botanical names on the labels and in many garden references.
Common names
Common names are what you’re most likely to encounter when shopping for plants to put in your garden. You can find these names prominently displayed on seed packets or on seedling trays of plants that are for sale. They’re kind of like botanical nicknames that gardeners use to describe a certain type of plant without going into a great amount of detail. For example, the Hosta undulatafits into the genus Hosta,so most gardeners merely refer to these plants under the common name of hostas. And you may know that Hemerocallis is actually the genus name for the common daylily, but chances are that most gardeners you encounter just call them daylilies.
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