Carl Linnaeus devised our modern botanical naming system, but his grouping of plants according to their sexual parts caused some consternation
There are few things that put off the casual gardener so much as the sound of the plant enthusiast waving Latin names about. "Would you look at the size of that Musa basjoo!" she booms heartily. And "Go on! Smell my Lathyrus odoratus!" Let's translate: she's got a helluva big banana, and her sweet peas are especially fragrant this year. So really, there's no need for all that bandying about of botanical names, at least not in this case. But, where exactitude is required (say, in differentiating one yellow daisy from several dozen other yellow daisies, or in nailing down a particular alpine saxifrage), then Latin is your only man. We gardeners like to know exactly what we're talking about, and correct botanical names stop - rather than breed - confusion. Nonetheless, they should, in my opinion, not be shoved down the throats of non-gardeners, at least not without an apology.
If you find Latin binomials a pain in the gluteus maximus, then have some pity for the scholars, gardeners and botanists in the 17th and 18th centuries who just wanted to get a handle on a plant. As plant hunters became more active, and as the path to precision became strewn with increasing numbers of species, plant names grew and grew in length. For instance, shortly after it was introduced from Sicily at the end of the 17th century, the sweet pea was lumbered with Lathyrus distoplatyphyllus, hirsutus, mollis, magno et peramaeno flore, odoro. In other words, the "pea with widely separated broad leaves: hairy, soft, and with large and pleasing, scented flowers". Indeed. A perfect description, but hardly convenient.
And then, along came a clever Swedish botanist and physician, Carl Linnaeus, and reduced the sweet, but long-winded, pea to Lathyrus odoratus. He performed the same kind of surgery on nearly 6,000 other plant names (and several thousands of animal and mineral epithets). His enormous book, Species Plantarum, published in 1753, became the foundation for modern botanical nomenclature.
It lists about 8,000 plant species from all over the world: each entry with an official, diagnostic description of the plant (in anything from one to a dozen words), a list of synonyms, the place of origin, and - most importantly - a unique two-part name. Some of the binomials had been around already: Andrea Cesalpino had been working 200 years earlier on a double-name system, as had Gaspard Bauhin in the first part of the 17th century, and various other academics in the next century.
But it was Linnaeus's vast and computer-like brain that crunched up mountains of data relating to thousands of plants, and spewed it out again in neatly organised packages. He designated 24 classes, subdivided them into orders, then into genera, and finally, into species. He was the first person, in fact, to use the word "species" (meaning "kind" in Latin) to describe separate entities in the natural world.
In one massive endeavour, his Species Plantarumfinally brought order to the vast and unruly rag-bag of botanical nomenclature - into which the first patchy scraps had been thrown by Theophrastus more than 2,000 years earlier in ancient Greece. Linnaeus, with his incomparable organisational abilities, was, according to British garden writer Anna Pavord, a "sort of human clickety-clack machine".
You'd think his contemporaries would be pleased that he had sorted out the whole plant-naming mess into a rational and usable system, where a single binomial replaced a clatter of disorganised names. For instance, he gave them Verbena bonariensis, instead of the Verbena bonariensis altissima, lavendulae canariensis folio, spica lavendulae(and the various other appellations) that had been appended to the tall and airy verbena so favoured by gardeners today.
But scholars are born to quibble, and there was much criticism of the Scandinavian's methods. The Earl of Bute (himself a botanist), complained in a letter to Quaker horticulturist and draper Peter Collinson: "Dr Linnaeus has immensely changed his names and genera in this book . . . I cannot forgive him the number of barbarous Swedish names, for the sake of which he flings away all those fabricated in this country . . . I own I am surprized to see all Europe suffer these impertinences. In a few years more the Linnaean Botany will be a good Dictionary of Swedish proper names."
The Scottish peer also lamented that because of the "many bold coalitions of genuses, that I would keep asunder if possible . . . we shall have more confusion with orderthan we had formerly with disorder".
The Swede's methodology for organising the plant world also caused a certain amount of distaste. All plants were grouped according to his systema sexuale, which was based on the numbers of stamens and carpels (the male and female parts) in the flower. For example, a plant with one carpel and two stamens fell into the Monogynia(one wife) order of the Diandria(two husbands) class. And as stamen and carpel numbers varied widely from species to species, all manner of polygamous associations were possible.
Linnaeus's "gross prurience" would "shock female modesty" thundered the Bishop of Carlisle, while Johann Siegesbeck in St Petersburg was outraged at the "loathsome harlotry" of the system: "Who would have thought that bluebells, lilies and onions could be up to such immorality?" As a physician, Linnaeus specialised in treating sexually transmitted infections, which might explain the inspiration behind his classifications. (One of his correspondents, also a medical man, was Mayo-born Patrick Browne, who recommended pills of rhubarb and mercury to treat venereal disease.) In any case, Linnaeus's systema sexualedied a death shortly after his own demise in 1778.
But his binomial system is alive and well today, and remains the foundation for all plant (and animal) names. His grandiose statement: "Deus creavit, Linnaeus disposuit" (God created, Linnaeus organised) was not all that far off the mark. Appropriately, for one who had such a lofty opinion of himself, Linnaeus had "apostles": 17 naturalists who travelled to the corners of the earth, sending specimens and descriptions back to the master in Uppsala, where they were methodically added to the great global cataloguing project.
This year marks the 300th anniversary of the birth of the greatest organiser of this earth's flora and fauna, and he is being feted all over the horticultural and scientific world. He was the man of the moment at Chelsea Flower Show (which spanned his birthday on May 23rd) when a garden in his honour, designed by Ulf Nordfjell, gleaned a gold medal. Among the many plants demonstrating Linnaeus's sexual system was Paeonia lactiflora, a member of his multi-stamened Polyandriaclass. He described this arrangement as "20 males or more in the same bed with the female". Now who said botanical Latin was dull?