INFORMATION ABOUT THE MEANING OF BULB BOTANICAL NAMES…
Image by Le Do When shopping for bulbs (and their cousins, tubers, corms and rhizomes), knowing the botanical name of your bulb can make find the bulb you want a whole lot easier. A botanical name is the ‘official’ name given to a particular flower. It is universally used and will be the same no matter who you talk to or where you shop.
Many people know their favorite bulbs by their common name. The problem with this is that there may be several common names for any one flowering bulb or that several different types of bulbs may have the same common name. Also, if you are a collector or just someone looking for something a little different, you will need to know the species, variety and perhaps even the cultivar.
I will be the first to admit that looking at a botanical name can be a bit intimidating. The first thing you ill notice is that they are in Latin. If you are an average person, you have probably not had much experience with Latin. If you are an average former Catholic school student, you are probably cringing. But, never fear. Botanical names are easy to decipher if you know the pattern that all botanical names follow.
The first part of a botanical name is the genus, which is like the plant group that the flowering bulb belongs too. Because many English words are derived from Latin words, many times you will see that the genus looks very similar to the common name that you may know the bulb by. For example, the genus for tulips is tulipa. The genus for daffodils is Narcissus, and another common name for daffodils is a narcissus.
The second part of the botanical name will tell you the species. The species is the particular kind of bulb you are looking at from a genus. An Allium Giganteum (commonly called Giant Allium) looks very different from Allium Moly (commonly called Lily Leek). They are from the same plant group but look different.
Occasionally, between the first part of a plant name, the genus, and the second part of a plant name, the species, there will be an ‘X’. This indicates that the bulb is the result of a cross of other species from that genus.
Occasionally, a bulb’s botanical name will also have a third part. This third name will be either the variety or the cultivar. If the third name is in Latin, than it is the variety. If the third name is in English and surrounded by single quotes, this is the cultivar. A variety is normally a naturally found variation of that bulb, while a cultivar is a man made or cultivated variety of the bulb. Keep in mind while shopping though, most modern bulb companies use the words variety and cultivar interchangeably, so a flowering bulb description may say variety when in fact it is talking about a cultivar.
And that’s about it, in a nutshell or a bulb, as the case may be. Knowing the botanical name of the bulb you are looking for will make things much easier when you are shopping.