Written by J. Mitchell Brown

y and far the class I struggled with most at Clemson -- save for organic chemistry -- was Botany 431, Plant Taxonomy.  This was not a good class in which to struggle for a budding (pun intended) horticulturist.  This class was focused on the identification and nomenclature of plants.  It was 99% Latin and 1% luck, neither of which I am very gifted in.  Our final exam consisted of Satan,  disguised as a professor dumping a tray of about 50 leafless twigs on the table. We then had an hour to identify them by their proper Latin names, complete with genus and species, and spelled correctly.  Let’s hear it for the bell curve!
     As I’ve mentioned before, I never quite saw the need to master all of those Latin botanical names the scientists and real horticulturists love to use.  I’m perfectly happy with the colorful descriptive names that has satisfied countless gardening pioneers for generations.  As an example, Cupea ignea doesn’t tell me a whole lot, but I can certainly recognize a “Cigar plant.”
     My parent’s parents, and their parents before, often let the characteristics of a plant lend a hand in choosing a common name for it.  For instance, is there a tougher plant to destroy than a “cast iron plant?”  A ground cover that changes the color of its leaves?  Well, of course it would be called a “chameleon.”  “Four o’clocks” give a clue as to when to expect the blooms to open each day.  And you can surely picture the sharp-edged leaves of a “snake plant.”  It’s also called a “Mother-in-law’s tongue,” but I won’t go there.  Though the name “love-in-the-mist” doesn’t do much to describe the visible characteristics of its namesake, the seeds from this plant are perfect miniature hearts hidden in the seed pods that scatter away when a dried pod is popped open.
     Before so many annuals were hybridized and improved,   they were prolific self-seeders, which insured their survival and presence from one season to the next.  Impatiens would seed so quickly that gardeners often referred to them as “busy-lizzies.”  Lunaria annua was properly named based on the Latin luna for “moon” because the seed pods were the shape of the moon.  But you may more easily recognize the plant as I do:  I’ve always heard this plant called “money plant” because the pods, when dried, resemble silvery coins. 
     It was back in the day when grandmothers never missed opportunities for object lessons or moral advice for hooligans and whippersnappers (like me) and therefore many of her garden plants had biblical connections to be shared.  “Moses-in-the-cradle,”  “crown of thorns,” “passion vine,” and the spectacular “angel’s trumpet” are but a few that come to mind.  To keep these lessons in balance, and perhaps to help cultivate a more God-fearing young’n, we also heard about the “devil’s backbone” and his “old walking stick.”
     I’ve always laughed and been awe-stricken at the innocent perceptions of children.  Without the years and beats that jade most adults over time, a kid will look at something and tell you exactly what he sees.  I have spent the better part of my life hiding from my first name, James. Oh, it’s a family name and I’m proud of it and all, but with a last name like Brown, well... you know where the jokes go.  “Oh, hey!  The godfather,”  they’d say or  “Somebody, HIT meah!”  Ha, ha.  Yeah, that’s funny.  You think that one up just now?  I’ve never heard that one.  My niece freed me from that, though, by telling me  I look like a monkey.  That was probably 5 or 6 years ago.  Now I’m either Uncle Monkey or Monkey Boy.  Just the way she perceived it.  (It’s still an improvement.)
     With that in mind, though, perhaps it was a kid who named “lamb’s ear, “ toad lilies,”  “elephant ears,”  “cat whiskers,” “burro tails,” “cockscomb,” “bear’s breeches,” and “hen and chicks.”  Tell me you can’t look at each of those plants and see exactly how those names came about.  I can see a father trying to explain to some child what the real name of such-and-such a plant is, and the little girl with big blue innocent eyes and curly little ringlets looking up at him and saying, “But daddy.  I don’t care what you say it’s supposed to be called....it looks and feels like a lamb’s ear.”  Incidentally, Riverbanks Zoo in Columbia recently created a garden area featuring plants that were named for animals.
     It is a mighty small population that can call a plant by its given name.  Remembering back to the days when I worked in my grandfather’s nursery, I still chuckle when I hear a lady in a garden center ask a salesperson, “Can you help me find a plant?  It’s about yay high and has squiggly stalks with a beautiful bloom like a wad of yellow tissue paper balled up.”  I’ve heard it a thousand times.  And the truth is, I could work with you so much easier with that information than hearing a ten-syllable, impossible to spell scientific name.