The Naming of Plants

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In an earlier blog, I commented on the tendency to name plants after the donor, thus ’Pauline’s geranium’. Pleasant though it is to have a border full of ‘friends’, there are occasions when it’s necessary or desirable to know the proper botanical name. With this in mind, I posted a query on Thursday, with a picture of the geranium. My mistake was to post a profile rather than a face on photograph, but one respondent was able to put me on the right track. Anyway, from now on, when I want to identify a plant, I know to post a face on photo, as I’ve done below for the geranium concerned.

There are other plants which also remain anonymous, or which have really bizarre names. For instance, Gershwin would no doubt be tickled to know that we have a rose named after his ‘Rhapsody in Blue’. This is a bit of poetic licence, really, because it’s more purple than blue, and like many roses, it changes colour as the flowers mature. (The picture below is of the first bud to appear.) This season looks like being a bumper one for roses, although I’ve had to zap the white fly on some. I always said that I couldn’t be bothered with roses, and basically that still applies, but we inherited some roses, including a vigorous though misplaced Kiftsgate, as well as the one depicted in the third photograph below, and over the past few years have succumbed to the attraction of the rose, despite some of them sporting pretty kitsch names. On reflection, I prefer to name our plants after friends, or to use descriptive names, like ‘the blue rose’.

• 12 Jun, 2010
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