You Grow Girl™

The levels of classification that are relevant to most botanists are family, genus, and species. Tribes, or sub-families are also used to group genera in very large families such as Asteraceae (sunflower) and Fabaceae (pea). As you may have noticed, plant family names almost always end in -ceae. Genus names are a little more variable, but generally end in -us. Species names are all over the map. When you look at species names, they can sometimes tell you something about the appearance of the plant (example, variegata) or where it is found (example, gypsophilum, or gypsum-loving). Sometimes it is named after a person. A common species specifier in California is eastwoodii, after Alice Eastwood, a prolific and dedicated California botanist. Again, species monikers by themselves have very little information about plant identity - they are designed to only be used with genus names.

Pronounciation

Binomial nomenclature can be intimidating to pronounce, but just remember your basic Latin: almost all consonants are hard and almost all vowels are long. There's also room for your own interpretation: more than half of the California botanists I know pronounce -ceae (seee-eee), not (ki, long i). Most of us are not that hung up on a specific pronunciation. If anyone EVER gives you a hard time about your pronunciation, you are allowed to tell them to lighten up. Practice on your favorite plant names and starting getting familiar with the common plant families in your area. Once you get proficient at identifying members of the snapdragon family (for example), you'll be able to identify plants that seemed really different, because of their different colored flowers or differently shaped leaves, as cousins.

For a database of flowering plant families and their characteristics (technical, text only) visit http://biodiversity.uno.edu/delta/

Erin is a restoration ecologist working in the San Francisco area. She also keeps a journal that tracks some of her plant activities in the journals section of this site.