What's in a name?

Gardening with the RHS

Royal Horticultural Society

Home & Garden, Leisure, Hobbies

4.4 • 654 Ratings

🗓️ 3 March 2022

⏱️ 22 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Plant names and their pronunciation can be a vexed business. If you’re overwhelmed by long Latin plant names, take heart: botanist and author James Wong comes to the rescue and explains why the botanical names matter and how a little knowledge of them can give us clues as to how plants look and perform. He explains that since Latin is a dead language, there’s no-one around to correct your pronunciation – so just go ahead and have a go! When familiar plant names are changed, it can be a source of annoyance for us gardeners. But James Armitage, Editor of The Plant Review, explains there is method behind the apparent madness of this; plus, after the storms, what you need to check in your garden this weekend. Useful links The Plant Review Promoting garden plant diversity (RHS website) Meet the RHS horticultural taxonomy team

Transcript

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0:00.0	Get your tickets for the greatest show in Earth at an RHS garden near you.
0:06.4	Where nature puts on an unforgettable performance of colour and fragrance to delight your senses.
0:13.2	Inspire your gardening adventures and entertain your own little stars.
0:17.4	Race you, let's go.
0:19.5	Catch Springs finest scenes while you can at an RHS garden near you, let's go. Catch Springs, finest scenes while you can,
0:22.1	at an RHS garden near you.
0:24.0	Book tickets online for discounts,
0:26.0	plus under fives go free and under 16s of five pounds.
0:31.4	Mother-in-law's tongue, sneeze wort,
0:33.9	viper's beogloss.
0:35.1	My favourite plant name is one of a common weed
0:37.1	called Green Alconet or
0:38.4	Penteglottis Semperverens, because in both English and Latin it sounds like something straight out
0:43.4	the pages of a Harry Potter book. If you've ever felt overwhelmed by long plant names or
0:48.6	unsure how to pronounce Ampelopsis brevi-pudunculata, then this is the show for you.
0:53.7	I'm exploring how we can look for clues in the names of the plants we grow with my fellow podcast host Fiona Davidson,
0:59.3	and botanist James Wong will be calming any pronunciation worries.
1:03.4	Plus, why do plant names change just when we think we're up to date?
1:07.2	Editor of the Plant Review magazine James Armitage will be explaining all.
1:11.1	Welcome to Gardening with the RHS, with me, Gareth Richards.
1:17.5	So, what's in the name?
1:19.4	The international naming system that we use for plants has existed for hundreds of years,
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