| December 7, 2021
Latin Lover
I greet December with pleasure because in December it is acceptable to speak Latin. One can without embarrassment sing Adeste fidelis laeti triumphantes; Gloria in excelsis deo; Magnificat anima mea. One might even during this season greet a friend or stranger with Pax vobiscum.
I love Latin. I was privileged to have access to four years of Latin in high school, a gift of an older understanding of what made for good education even in a small town in the middle of the Midwest. On afternoons when our SPQR club was meeting, my fellow Latin lovers and I would march around the halls of our school in togas made from sheets. If asked, we would most happily explain the meaning of Senatus Populusque Romanus, pointing out that SPQR appeared on the triumphal arches, the altars, and the coins of ancient Rome and was a way of signifying that the Roman republic included its people as well as its Senate. We were already young democrats.
Recently, readers of my work at journals where I hope to publish have begun to ask me to go light on the Latin names of plants and to find common equivalents wherever possible. “It’s off-putting,” they tell me; “nobody wants to read Latin.” Such comments remind me of my mother’s mantra which she would share whenever I would hit an ablative absolute I didn’t understand: “All are dead who ever spoke it/ all are dead who ever wrote it/ happy death, I think they earned it.”
Lucky for me, Latin is still alive in the world of horticulture. My gardening friends delight in my penchant for muttering Latin when encountering something green and growing. Some of my non-gardening friends are impressed by my knowledge of Latin names as well as common ones. Others, of course, consider it showing off. To them I whisper the ancient Chinese saying, “The beginning of knowledge is knowing things by their right names.”
A plant may often have several common names. Consider, for example, self-heal, a plant beloved of herbalists, which also goes by the name of heal-all, woundwort, heart-of-the-earth, carpenter’s herb, brownwort, or blue curls. I prefer to call it simply Prunella vulgaris, its one and only Latin name.
Of course, that definitive Latin name can change as horticulturalists fine tune the legacy of Linnaeus. Joe Pye weed used to be called Eupatorium. Now I must learn to say Eutrochium. These changes can cause confusion, temporarily, but such confusion is nothing like the problems produced when someone tells me they have just planted a “lily.” Do they mean Hemerocallis (the common daylily) or Lilium (the exotic oriental lily)? If someone tells me they have just purchased “mugwort” and note that this is a rather ugly name for such a beautiful plant, I have no idea which of the several species of rather different plants in the genus Artemesia they are referring to.
Lack of attention to the proper names of plants can cause problems for the person on the prowl for an effect that will please herself and astonish the neighbors. Perhaps she has decided that feathery gold in her fall garden is just the thing to get attention and has been told that “Bluestar,” aka Amsonia, can give her the effect she is looking for. If, however, she spurns the taste of Latin and comes home with Amsonia tabernaemontana instead of Amsonia hubrichtii she will be sorely disappointed. She may even be angry.
I rarely lose my temper in the garden, but I can sometimes get angry at the lack of attention to Latin. Once, when a client of Perennial Wisdom, my small perennial design business, returned from the nursery with Juniperis squamata ‘Meyeri’ when I had specified Juniperis squamata ‘Blue Chip,’ I lost it. “What’s the difference?” he said. “Both are blue, and both are junipers.” “Try five feet, maybe more,” I snapped. “Try fast-growing and weak, as opposed to slow-growing and sturdy. Try leggy liability as opposed to attractive, bushy, and manageable. Try learning the names.”
When I talk to my plants, as I often do, I call to them by their Latin names. Latin feels good in my mouth and on my lips. It a sensory experience, as rich to me as any I have in my garden. It is also how I know them. With Cladrastis lutea on my tongue, I have met my yellowwood tree and I know that it is not Acer saccharum, the sugar maple that fell victim to girdling roots and which I have replaced with the yellowwood.
Though not the lush of Latin, the third term in the name of a plant can send shivers up my spine. I had Tilia cordata ‘Glenleven’; my neighbor across the street had Tilia cordata ‘Greenspire.’ My tree and his were not the same. I observed the difference every day, but I somehow knew it when I spoke the names, ‘Glenleven,’ and ‘Greenspire.’ With that third term I felt the difference between fastigiate and widely-branching, between large leaf and small leaf, between fast-growing and moderate. When there is no third term for a plant I have purchased, I feel anxious. I know the genus of my yellowwood, Cladrastis, and the species, lutea, but does it have a “cultivar” name that I don’t know, that I have somehow missed?
I treasure my copy of Bill Neal’s Gardener’s Latin. With this book I need no longer puzzle over what my lovely Latin plant name means in English. For example, I learn that “lutea” means “yellow.” More interestingly, I discover that “verticillate” as in Ilex verticillata, aka winterberry, means “whorled.” I am off to take a closer look at this shrub whose branches, now free of leaves, are covered in brilliant red berries. Perhaps I can find some whorling.
Despite my passion, however, I have begun to capitulate to the pressure to eliminate the Latin from my writing. It must be done, I want to reach readers. (I shudder to think how many of my readers have already given up on this piece and its excess of italics.) So in the future look for Japanese winter creeper as opposed to Euonymous fortunei; for paperbark maple as opposed to Acer griseum, for mugwort and heal all and Joe Pye weed. But don’t expect lily. I have to draw the line somewhere.
Meanwhile, felicem natalem Christi. Or is it felix dies navitatum? Or possibly dies nativitatis hilaris? Maybe those editors are right. I should stick to English.
Season’s greetings and happy holidays to you all.
Amsonia tabernaemontana (top) vs. Amsonia hubrechtii (bottom)
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