Confusing Plant Names

VETERAN actor Michael Caine has been giving interviews to newspapers and magazines to coincide with the release of his new movie, Harry Brown.
In one published in The Herald magazine he told of how his mother came to visit him in Hollywood and was very taken by “the hysteria growing up every wall.”
I know how she felt. How often have you grappled for a plant name only to miss it by a few letters or a syllable?
This week I found myself stuck for the Latin name of the Smokebush. Was it Cotinus coggygria or not? In fact it is, but once I started to doubt myself I found my brain running through everything from Garrya elliptica to Greyvillia without being sure of the answer.
Fortunately I have Jim Jermyn, Show Manager of Gardening Scotland to keep me right.
Every time we are in a garden Jim challenges me to name all sorts of odd and unusual plants and I have a dread of getting the answers wrong because he wouldn’t let me forget about it.
It doesn’t help that the names themselves keep changing. I still find myself referring to the Corsican Hellebore as Helleborus corsicus, even though it has been known as Helleborus argutifolius for quite a long time now.
There are good reasons for changing plant names of course. As scientists and botanists find out more about individual plants they reclassify them, giving them Latin names that more accurately describe the plant families to which they belong.
Keeping up with all these changes is hard work for growers and garden centres and it is even more confusing for those of us who are not experts.
Some plants however seem destined to be misnamed, no matter how established their nomenclature. For instance, how many times have you heard someone refer to Rhododendrums? And of course, while all Pelargoniums are Geraniums, not all Geraniums are Pelargoniums.
Confused? I rest my case.
Agnes Stevenson