Rupert wrote:

Forget the half acre, some of the best and most charming gardens are
contained in very small areas.

Very true and it is very much more difficult to garden successfully in
a small space. Any fool can hide a multitude of sins in a large
garden, but the slightest 'hiccup' in a small garden becomes glaringly
obvious. I like the fact that you've taken the bold step of
installing such a proportionally large pond. Most folks do the
opposite and create tiny features and plant tiny plants. It is a huge
mistake that accentuates the limitations of the plot. If well
executed, large bold features and plants can create the impression of
space.

As for the names bit-they aren't really Latin or scientific and sometimes
not even botanical.

Ah the complexities of Latin, Greek, Sanskrit and Arabic, let alone
mention the latinised human names!

You can talk about Busy Lizzie if you want but .....

Now go way and do your homework and report back on "Amorphophallus" :-)

Rupert! You've been reading far too many of Oasian posts ;-)

Don't take any notice BoyPete and for goodness sake, never admit to
having one! For my sins I have several, but I've been around long
enough not to care about what people think :-)

Alan Holmes wrote:

Are there latin names for such things as sprouts, peas, cabbage, carrots,
strawberries, runner beans and sweet corn?

Brassica oleracea 'gemmifera', Pisum sativum, Brassica oleracea,
Daucum carota, Fragaria x ananasa, Phaseolus coccinea, Zea mays.

But if there are please do not confuse me!

Oh sorry Alan, I do apologise. It sort of slipped out ... a bit like
Rupert's Amorphophallus :-o

"BoyPete" wrote in message
...
I've lurked for ages, just posting occasionally. I do hope my pond
orientated posts don't annoy. My garden is about 20ft square, nearly half
is pond now. Most people here seem to be 'real' gardeners, something I'd
love to be if I had the room! I dream of retiring to a large old house
with half an acre..........yeah.....dream on. In the past, I've grown
carrots, Swede, peas, runner beans, lettuce etc, but until recently,
especially sweet corn......great picked and straight on the BBQ Now, I
only have pots Something which bugs me, is the use of the Latin names
for plants. I realise that if you are really into gardening, these things
are important, but to the likes of me........an interested wannabe, they
are meaningless. It would be nice if folk could call plants by their
'common' name perhaps with the Latin in brackets? What do you think?
Thanks for a great friendly group.
ßôyþëtë

Hi
I too am very bad with the Latin name....but they can be confusing as people
call things different names in different parts of the country.

Also Latin can be handy when looking for stuff - especially on the net. I
use these sometimes to translate stuff:
http://www.pp.clinet.fi/~mygarden/diction2.htm
http://www.plantpress.com/dictionary.html

Jenny

"Alan Holmes" wrote


Are there latin names for such things as sprouts, peas, cabbage, carrots,
strawberries, runner beans and sweet corn?

But if there are please do not confuse me!
Alan

I LOVE confusing people :~)
http://www.urbanext.uiuc.edu/veggies/latin.html
Jenny

"La Puce" wrote in message
ps.com...
On 24 Feb, 21:55, "BoyPete" wrote:

Something which bugs me, is the use of the Latin names for plants. I
realise that if you are really into gardening, these things are
important,
but to the likes of me........an interested wannabe, they are
meaningless.
It would be nice if folk could call plants by their 'common' name perhaps
with the Latin in brackets? What do you think? Thanks for a great
friendly
group.

Sure. I've just realised I've given you latin name for two grasses -
out of 4 though in your last thread ;o)
Well, the thing is I sometimes don't know them by a common name. Or if
I do it's a French common name! It's a good idea though and with a
common name I find I retain the latin name better.

And I find I sometimes know what a thing is called in either English, Dutch
or even German....but the Latin nearly always escapes me :~)
Jenny

Sacha wrote:
On 24/2/07 21:55, in article ,
"BoyPete" wrote:

snip

The problem is Common names common to where? In UK they change from
county to county or even parish to parish so it's not helpful.
If the Latin names are used, they're recognised all over the world.
That's why they're used - for plantspeople and gardeners, it's the
universal language. I think it might be helpful to you to look at
the Latin names and then check out the common names which will be
entirely different in every corner of the planet.
To take one wild plant alone, I've seen it named here as 'goose
grass', 'sticky willie' and 'cleavers', depending on the region the
poster comes from. Latin names are unequivocal if you're talking to
someone in Berkshire or Bareclona.

Yes, I understand that now. Still, it's very off-putting to the likes of me
to see all that Latin in a post, and I tend to skip them.....possibly
missing some useful info.
--
ßôyþëtë

On Feb 25, 5:39 am, "Dave Poole" wrote:
Alan Holmes wrote:
Are there latin names for such things as sprouts, peas, cabbage, carrots,
strawberries, runner beans and sweet corn?

Brassica oleracea 'gemmifera', Pisum sativum, Brassica oleracea,
Daucum carota, Fragaria x ananasa, Phaseolus coccinea, Zea mays.

Now that was educational. I saw Pisum sativum, thought "surely peas
can't be a type of garlic!" and googled. I now know that sativa means
sown or cultivated.

How shaky would my ground be if I were to assume that, as a general
rule, the first word of the latin name IDs the plant and the second is
sort of extra information, style of thing?
--
Rob

JennyC wrote:
"BoyPete" wrote in message
...
I've lurked for ages, just posting occasionally. I do hope my pond
orientated posts don't annoy. My garden is about 20ft square, nearly half
is pond now. Most people here seem to be 'real' gardeners, something I'd
love to be if I had the room! I dream of retiring to a large old house
with half an acre..........yeah.....dream on. In the past, I've grown
carrots, Swede, peas, runner beans, lettuce etc, but until recently,
especially sweet corn......great picked and straight on the BBQ Now, I
only have pots Something which bugs me, is the use of the Latin names
for plants. I realise that if you are really into gardening, these things
are important, but to the likes of me........an interested wannabe, they
are meaningless. It would be nice if folk could call plants by their
'common' name perhaps with the Latin in brackets? What do you think?
Thanks for a great friendly group.
ßôyþëtë

Hi
I too am very bad with the Latin name....but they can be confusing as people
call things different names in different parts of the country.

Also Latin can be handy when looking for stuff - especially on the net. I
use these sometimes to translate stuff:
http://www.pp.clinet.fi/~mygarden/diction2.htm
http://www.plantpress.com/dictionary.html

Jenny



Using Latin names is confusing enough for me, but why do they so often
seem to change plant names?

"BoyPete" wrote in message
...
I've lurked for ages, just posting occasionally. I do hope my pond
orientated posts don't annoy. My garden is about 20ft square, nearly half
is pond now. Most people here seem to be 'real' gardeners, something I'd
love to be if I had the room! I dream of retiring to a large old house
with half an acre..........yeah.....dream on. In the past, I've grown
carrots, Swede, peas, runner beans, lettuce etc, but until recently,
especially sweet corn......great picked and straight on the BBQ Now, I
only have pots Something which bugs me, is the use of the Latin names
for plants. I realise that if you are really into gardening, these things
are important, but to the likes of me........an interested wannabe, they
are meaningless. It would be nice if folk could call plants by their
'common' name perhaps with the Latin in brackets? What do you think?
Thanks for a great friendly group.

Yes both latin and common names would be best but the latin names do serve a
purpose in that they positively identify what is being referred to whereas
common names can mislead. One good example is swede and turnip, which are
transposed by some people in different parts of the world. I'm not about to
start an argument about which is which but with the latin names there can be
no argument.


--
Chris, West Cork, Ireland.

In message . com, Rob
Hamadi writes
On Feb 25, 5:39 am, "Dave Poole" wrote:
Alan Holmes wrote:
Are there latin names for such things as sprouts, peas, cabbage, carrots,
strawberries, runner beans and sweet corn?

Brassica oleracea 'gemmifera', Pisum sativum, Brassica oleracea,
Daucum carota, Fragaria x ananasa, Phaseolus coccinea, Zea mays.

Now that was educational. I saw Pisum sativum, thought "surely peas
can't be a type of garlic!" and googled. I now know that sativa means
sown or cultivated.

How shaky would my ground be if I were to assume that, as a general
rule, the first word of the latin name IDs the plant and the second is
sort of extra information, style of thing?
--
Rob

Depends on what you mean by "the plant". The first word is the genus
which identifies a group of related plants, and the second word is the
specific epithet, which identifies the species, which is probably what a
botanist would identify as the plant.

After that it all gets more complicated - species can be divided into
subspecies, varieties (e.g. Malva moschata var. heterophylla, which is a
variety of musk mallow with less divided leaves), forms (e.g. Malva
moschata f. alba, which is the white-flowered form) and even subforms,
and there are also cultivars - cultivated varieties - of several
different categories, and also selling names. For example Lavatera olbia
'Eyecatcher' is a cultivar of Lavatera olbia, and Lavatera x clementii
Chamallow is a selling name of the cultivar Lavatera x clementii
'Innovera'. Cultivars can be arranged in groups, e.g. Malva sylvestris
Sterile Blue Group, consisting of the sterile (are they all?)
blue-flowered forms of the common mallow.

There are hybrids between subspecies, species and even genera giving
rise to nothogenera (e.g. x Sorbopyrus, which is a hybrids between a
Sorbus - I forget whether it was whitebeam or a rowan - and a pear),
nothospecies (e.g. Lavatera x clementii, the common shrubby Lavatera of
gardens, which is a hybrid between the shrubby Lavatera olbia and the
herbaceous Lavatera thuringiaca) and nothosubspecies. Nomenclature-wise,
when you get to rhododendrons and orchids you also have grexes, which
include all hybrids of a particular parentage.

In the case of large - or even not so large - genera, genera are divided
into subgenera, sections, subsections, series and subseries. For example
the common mallow, and several weedy species belong to section Malva of
genus Malva, and the musk mallow, Malva moschata, the hollyhock mallow,
Malva alcea, and their hybrid Malva x intermedia, belong to section
Bismalva. Subgenera etc are not usually represented in the name of a
plant.

Above the genus plants are grouped into larger categories (all of these,
including the ones described above, are collectively known as taxa -
singular taxon). The required ranks are family, order, class [1] and
division (or phylum), but botanists can also use subtribe, tribe,
subfamily, suborder, subclass and subdivision if they want. (Zoologists
have even more choices.) Informal groups of genera - groups or alliance
- fill the gap between genus and subtribe in some groups.

[1] The recent classifications from the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group don't
use the rank of class, but define a number of informal supraordinal
taxa.
--
Stewart Robert Hinsley

In message , BoyPete
writes
Sacha wrote:
On 24/2/07 21:55, in article ,
"BoyPete" wrote:

snip

The problem is Common names common to where? In UK they change from
county to county or even parish to parish so it's not helpful.
If the Latin names are used, they're recognised all over the world.
That's why they're used - for plantspeople and gardeners, it's the
universal language. I think it might be helpful to you to look at
the Latin names and then check out the common names which will be
entirely different in every corner of the planet.
To take one wild plant alone, I've seen it named here as 'goose
grass', 'sticky willie' and 'cleavers', depending on the region the
poster comes from. Latin names are unequivocal if you're talking to
someone in Berkshire or Bareclona.

Yes, I understand that now. Still, it's very off-putting to the likes of me
to see all that Latin in a post, and I tend to skip them.....possibly
missing some useful info.

Botanical names are no harder, in principle, to cope with than
vernacular names. All you have to do is not let them intimidate you.
--
Stewart Robert Hinsley

In article ,
Broadback writes:
|
| Using Latin names is confusing enough for me, but why do they so often
| seem to change plant names?

Fundamentalist dogma.

Seriously. There was an agreement on how to slected a particular name
if several authors had used different ones for the same species, or if
what were two species turned out to be variants of one. Fine. All
well and good, but the (botanical) religious ferverts got the upper
hand over the (horticultural) pragmatists and turned a sound rule into
a Holy Doctrine.

There is a pragmatic rule for genera, which is very necessary to avoid
generic names changing every time someone discovers a mouldering paper
to the Botanical Society of Novosibirsk in 1800. But there is no such
rule for specific names, which is why we get abominations like Viburnum
farreri - which is STILL called V. fragrans in horticulture, quite
reasonably. This interacts with the ongoing war between the 'splitters'
and 'clumpers' religious sects, because they need to fiddle the names
every time they reshuffle the species.

All right, that's the jaundiced viewpoint, and you can can equally well
spin the same facts into a 'best effort' solution to an intractable
problem, handicapped by reactionary and carping ignoramuses :-)

The root cause is that, as Oscar Wilde said, the truth is rarely pure
and never simple. And dividing even the higher plants into species
is most definitely a truth of that form! So all schemes will be
unsatisfactory, and arbitrary rules are needed but absolute ones will
always get individual cases wrong. It IS an intractable problem.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.

In message , Broadback
writes
JennyC wrote:
"BoyPete" wrote in message
...
I've lurked for ages, just posting occasionally. I do hope my pond
orientated posts don't annoy. My garden is about 20ft square, nearly
half is pond now. Most people here seem to be 'real' gardeners,
something I'd love to be if I had the room! I dream of retiring to a
large old house with half an acre..........yeah.....dream on. In the
past, I've grown carrots, Swede, peas, runner beans, lettuce etc,
but until recently, especially sweet corn......great picked and
straight on the BBQ Now, I only have pots Something which
bugs me, is the use of the Latin names for plants. I realise that if
you are really into gardening, these things are important, but to
the likes of me........an interested wannabe, they are meaningless.
It would be nice if folk could call plants by their 'common' name
perhaps with the Latin in brackets? What do you think? Thanks for a great friendly group.
ßôyþëtë
Hi
I too am very bad with the Latin name....but they can be confusing as
people call things different names in different parts of the country.
Also Latin can be handy when looking for stuff - especially on the
net. I use these sometimes to translate stuff:
http://www.pp.clinet.fi/~mygarden/diction2.htm
http://www.plantpress.com/dictionary.html
Jenny

Using Latin names is confusing enough for me, but why do they so often
seem to change plant names?

The botanical names of plants reflect botanists opinion as to how they
should be classified. Botanists change their opinions as new evidence is
uncovered. There is also the eternal war between the lumpers (who place
more plants in a single species or genus) and the splitters (who divide
them into more species and genera).

But botanical names are not all that unstable - many of them go back all
the way to the mid-18th century.
--
Stewart Robert Hinsley

On 25/2/07 05:26, in article
, "Dave Poole"
wrote:

Rupert wrote:

Forget the half acre, some of the best and most charming gardens are
contained in very small areas.

Very true and it is very much more difficult to garden successfully in
a small space. Any fool can hide a multitude of sins in a large
garden, but the slightest 'hiccup' in a small garden becomes glaringly
obvious. I like the fact that you've taken the bold step of
installing such a proportionally large pond. Most folks do the
opposite and create tiny features and plant tiny plants. It is a huge
mistake that accentuates the limitations of the plot. If well
executed, large bold features and plants can create the impression of
space.

Your own garden is a testament to what can be achieved in a really small
area and be made into something stunning.

As for the names bit-they aren't really Latin or scientific and sometimes
not even botanical.

Ah the complexities of Latin, Greek, Sanskrit and Arabic, let alone
mention the latinised human names!

You can talk about Busy Lizzie if you want but .....

Now go way and do your homework and report back on "Amorphophallus" :-)

Rupert! You've been reading far too many of Oasian posts ;-)

Don't take any notice BoyPete and for goodness sake, never admit to
having one! For my sins I have several, but I've been around long
enough not to care about what people think :-)

And the latter should be the motto of all gardeners - it's your patch of the
world, do what you like in it. The other day, driving back from Dulverton,
we were stopped by some temporary traffic lights and on our right was a very
ordinary, sloping lawn in front of a bungalow. I don't think there was a
flower bed in sight. It was absolutely plastered with all kinds of statuette
things - geese, cats, a collie, a golfer, a shire horse, rabbits etc. etc.
It's the sort of thing I'd run a mile from myself but we couldn't take our
eyes off it! Ray said that it must be murder every time they cut the grass
and had to move everything and I said that was probably half the fun of it
because then they can 'play' at re-arranging their little planet!

--
Sacha
http://www.hillhousenursery.co.uk
South Devon
http://www.discoverdartmoor.co.uk/
(remove weeds from address)

On 25/2/07 07:37, in article , "BoyPete"
wrote:

Sacha wrote:
On 24/2/07 21:55, in article ,
"BoyPete" wrote:

snip

The problem is Common names common to where? In UK they change from
county to county or even parish to parish so it's not helpful.
If the Latin names are used, they're recognised all over the world.
That's why they're used - for plantspeople and gardeners, it's the
universal language. I think it might be helpful to you to look at
the Latin names and then check out the common names which will be
entirely different in every corner of the planet.
To take one wild plant alone, I've seen it named here as 'goose
grass', 'sticky willie' and 'cleavers', depending on the region the
poster comes from. Latin names are unequivocal if you're talking to
someone in Berkshire or Bareclona.

Yes, I understand that now. Still, it's very off-putting to the likes of me
to see all that Latin in a post, and I tend to skip them.....possibly
missing some useful info.

If you can bear to bring yourself to learn them - at least the ones that
interest you, it will make it easier when you want to discuss them. I know
that some people mistakenly think that gardeners use Latin names to be
'snobby' but it does mean that whether we're talking to someone from Japan
to Katmandu, we all know what we're talking about.
OTOH, it doesn't stop us using the common names either!

--
Sacha
http://www.hillhousenursery.co.uk
South Devon
http://www.discoverdartmoor.co.uk/
(remove weeds from address)