By Brighton West

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but those of us in the plant world love Latin. And those who aren’t in the plant word (or some other science world) hate that – or are at least confused by it.  It’s a result of the formal system for naming species – binomial nomenclature – created by Carl Linnaeus in the mid-1700s.  Why do we love it?  Let me tell you a story of my bike ride to work last week:

I was riding down Knott Street in NE Portland and looked up at an unfamiliar tree.  Its leaves looked like Ash leaves, but the rest just didn’t look right – especially the fact that the Ash-like leaves were attached alternately instead of opposite.  Lucky for me, these trees are Portland Heritage trees, so they were labelled (in both Latin and English.)  These were Caucasian Wingnuts – Pterocarya fraxinafolia.

So let’s break down the Latin:

Ptero-?  Sound familiar?  Like a winged dinosaur?  Ptero means wings.

-carya?  Plant people know this one.  Carya is the genus for Hickory.

fraxina-?  Once again, easy for plant people.  Fraxinus is the genus for Ash trees.

-folia?  That should be easy.  Foliage or leaves.

So put it all together and you get a tree with winged nuts and leaves like an Ash.

So do you need to learn the entire Latin language to hang with us plant geeks?  No, but you could buy this book that I bought when I was in college: Gardener’s Latin

West is the programs director at Friends of Trees: [email protected]; 503-282-8846 ext. 19