Plant Name Complexities 🧐

Dealing with plants comes with some jargon growing pains.

Between cultivar names, variety names, common names, species names… a single plant can present various implications on mature size, color, structure, fruit production, disease resistance, wildlife value, and more. So, what are the tricks of the trade?

Common Names Can Be Unreliable And Inaccurate

Your common name is the everyday, casual-use name. Why are common names commonly unreliable? Firstly, most plants tend to have multiple common names. This means more opportunity to miss the plant you’re looking for. Secondly, plants can have the same or very similar common names. For example, Thelypteris kunthii and Dryopteris ludoviciana are both commonly called Southern Shield Fern. And thirdly, common names are often just flat-out poorly named. For example, the Eastern red cedar is actually a juniper and the Eastern white cedar is a cypress. The best identifier is the genus and species name. Eastern white cedar is Thuja occidentalis. Thuja being the genus lets us know the plant is in the cypress family and occidentalis lets us know the specific species of cypress that we are dealing with. Beyond the species, you will see these other naming conventions:

• cultivar - simply a cultivated variety. A version of a plant bred by humans. For example: Itea virginica ‘Little Henry’
• hybrid - created when two different species are crossed together to combine traits from both parents. For example: Heuchera × Tiarella aka Heucherella or Foamy Bells
• variety - less common to find. These are naturally occurring variations within a species. Unlike cultivars, varieties were not intentionally bred or selected by humans. For example: Rudbeckia hirta var. pulcherrima

Some Cultivars Aren’t Eco-friendly

As you could guess, some breeding and hybridizing in the plant world has prioritized ornamental traits. And as a result, it can unintentionally reduce habitat for pollinators and wildlife.

Your showy double echinacea like the ‘Double Scoop’ or ‘Milkshake’ or double bee balm cultivars crowd the bloom with petals to make them appear lush and dramatic. To pollinators they can become much less functional with harder to reach pollen/nectar.

Some cultivars have been bred to have sterile blooms, fewer seeds, or little to no fruit. This is more common in your shrubs that produce massive showy blooms that folks don’t want fruiting and seeding up their property. Take your oakleaf hydrangeas. Those showy petal-like florets that you see are infertile and the fertile florets are mixed in adjacent to those showstoppers. Some cultivars like ‘Snowflake’ have been bred to almost solely offer those infertile florets because they look so pretty! But obviously, that’s not convenient for our wildlife.

Morale of the story: do your Googles, folks! Research matters more than ever with our reality of new cultivars being revealed every day. And when in doubt, the straight species offers a safe bet, generally…

This hydrangea bloom shows the infertile florets (showy, petal-y, purple) and the fertile florets (blue and yellow, unassuming)