Botanical Latin 101

The science of botany has probably more discipline-specific words of any of the natural history subdisciplines. There are more than 30 words for types of hairs alone. But the origin of some of the words used can be a whimsical study. Let’s consider two common word endings in English vernacular names, wort and bane. Wort examples include liverworts, mugwort, ragwort, and many more. Wort comes from the Old English wyrt, an herb, plant, vegetable or crop.

Bane is derived from Old English bana, which means poison, killer or killer of. We have cowbane, baneberry, dogbane, and fleabane. These are killers of dogs, cows and fleas. Baneberry, is poisonous to all who consume the berries.

This is not new, dear readers, this is a review from a previous post. It does reflect on the fanciful nature of our language. The scientific names of plants, are those which are recognized in the published literature as the valid names of a plant entity. A species has two names, so is binomial. The first name is that of the genus. It can reflect a discoverer, a place or an attribute of all species belonging. Usually, the name is converted to a Latin or Greek word. Some examples of genus names are Circaea, Lupinus and Vaccinium. Each plant family is made up of multiple genera (plural of genus) which includes those plants sharing certain characteristics. Each genus then has one or more species included. Circaea, refers to Enchanter’s Nightshade. It is from Greek mythology. Circe who was the goddess of magic; an enchantress well-versed in magic potions and herbs. Lupinus translates from the Latin to mean wolfish or wolf-like. The name of the wolf is lupus. Perhaps 14th century botanists believed the plants ravenously depleted the soil, a fallacy as they are nitrogen-fixers, adding to the soil.

Vaccinium, the genus containing the blueberry and cranberry, refers to a cow, perhaps the plants are associated the habitat of cows in the distant past, as the name was used in classical times to refer to the blueberry.

The species name also can describe the size, shape, colour of the plant: albiflora - white, flowered; repens - crawling or sprawling; virginiana - of Virginia or the eastern US. Species names are used in many genera, while a genus name is unique to a family and a group of species.

Tansy Ragwort, photo by Marian Munro

Fleabane, photo by Marian Munro

Circaea, enchanter's nightshade, photo by Eugene Quigley

Lupinus, photo by Andy Dean

Vaccinium, blueberry flowers, photo by Martin Thomas