Plant names can feel a little like a secret language. You’re standing in a nursery, holding a pot with a tag that says Hydrangea arborescens ‘Annabelle’, and part of your brain says, “Lovely!” while another part says, “Am I supposed to pronounce that out loud?”
Good news: You don’t have to speak perfect botanical Latin to be a great gardener. You also don’t need to memorize every plant name in the garden center. But learning the basics of plant names can save you from confusion, help you choose the right plant, and make conversations with gardeners, designers, and nursery folks a whole lot clearer.
The Arboretum at Penn State’s guide, “Writing Plant Names,” puts it simply by breaking plant names into their parts: family, genus, specific epithet, species name, infraspecific ranks, cultivar names, trade names, and common names. The guide also explains how each part should be written, which is where all those italics, capital letters, and single quotes come in.
Why Not Just Use Common Names?
We love common names. They’re warm, memorable, and often wonderfully descriptive. Witch hazel sounds like something from a woodland fairy tale. Brown-eyed Susan feels like a neighbor. Japanese roof iris makes you want to ask, “Wait, roof?”
Common names are how most of us first learn plants. They’re useful because they’re friendly and easy to remember. Common names can apply at the family, genus, or species level. For example, Fagaceae is the beech family, Quercus is oak, and Quercus alba is white oak.
The trouble is that common names are not governed by one universal naming code. A plant may have several common names depending on region, tradition, or local habit. Nyssa sylvatica, for instance (pictured above), may be called black gum, sour gum, tupelo, or pepperidge. Generally, the common name most familiar in its region is chosen or, for less familiar plants, the name most widely used in horticultural literature.
That’s where botanical names shine. A botanical name is like a plant’s passport. It helps gardeners around the world know which plant we are actually talking about.
The Basic Plant Name: Genus Plus Specific Epithet
The heart of a botanical name is usually two words. This is called a binomial. Take eastern white pine: Pinus strobus (pictured above).
Pinus is the genus. Think of the genus as the plant’s close family group. The genus name should be italicized and capitalized.
strobus is the specific epithet. This is the second part of the name, and it helps identify the species within the genus. The specific epithet should be italicized and lowercase. Together, Pinus strobus is the species name.
A helpful way to picture it:
- Pinus = the pine group
- strobus = this particular pine
- Pinus strobus = eastern white pine
Botanical names often tell little stories. Sometimes the specific epithet describes a feature, a place, a person, or a habit. Hydrangea arborescens, smooth hydrangea, has an epithet that means “becoming tree-like,” according to the North Carolina Extension Gardener Plant Toolbox.
A Few More Name Parts
Some plant names have more than two parts. That doesn’t mean they’re trying to show off. Usually, each added piece gives you more information.
A family name is broader than genus.
It’s written in plain type, not italics, with the first letter capitalized. Pinaceae, the pine family, is one example of this.
An infraspecific rank sits below species.
You might see subsp., var., or f., which stand for subspecies, variety, and form. These are naturally occurring differences within a species. The abbreviation stays plain, while the name itself is italicized. For example, you might see Sambucus nigra subsp. canadensis.
A hybrid is shown with the multiplication symbol ×.
For this example, we use Fothergilla × intermedia (pictured above); it’s a hybrid fothergilla, and the × tells us we are looking at a cross.
A cultivar is a cultivated selection.
“Cultivar” comes from “cultivated variety.” A cultivar name is written in plain type, placed in single quotes, and each main word is capitalized. So we write Hydrangea arborescens ‘Annabelle’, not Hydrangea arborescens annabelle and not Hydrangea arborescens “Annabelle.”
A trade name is different from a cultivar name.
This is a marketing name, not the true botanical or cultivar name. For example: Hydrangea arborescens ‘Ncha1’ Invincibelle® Spirit. ‘Ncha1’ is the cultivar name, while Invincibelle® Spirit is the trade name.
That distinction matters because the pretty name on the tag may not be the official plant name. Plant marketing can be sparkly, and honestly, gardeners are not immune to sparkle!
Common Names Can Be Charming, But Slippery
Let’s play a quick garden game: What’s a hemlock?
In Western North Carolina, eastern hemlock usually means Tsuga canadensis, a beautiful evergreen tree in the pine family. In North Carolina, eastern hemlock is found primarily in the mountains and a small part of the Piedmont.
Poison hemlock, however, is Conium maculatum, a biennial herbaceous weed in the carrot family. It’s highly toxic and potentially fatal to people and livestock.
Same common-name word, very different plants. One is a beloved mountain tree. The other is a plant you definitely do not want to nibble.
Here’s another: cedar. Eastern red cedar is Juniperus virginiana. Despite the name, it’s a juniper, not a true cedar, and grows naturally from the coast to the mountains in North Carolina.
Then there’s geranium. Many gardeners call summer container plants “geraniums,” but those are often Pelargonium species or cultivars. True hardy geraniums are Geranium species, commonly called cranesbills. NC Extension lists Geranium carolinianum as Carolina cranesbill, Carolina geranium, or wild geranium, which shows how common names can overlap even in reliable sources.
And of course, there’s “snowball bush.” One gardener may mean Hydrangea arborescens ‘Annabelle’, a smooth hydrangea (pictured above, left). Another may mean a snowball viburnum, such as Viburnum macrocephalum (pictured above, center) or Viburnum opulus ‘Roseum’ (pictured above, right). If you’re asking when to prune your snowball bush, that difference matters a lot.
Botanical names are not about being fancy. They’re about making sure everyone’s talking about the same plant.
How to Write Plant Names Without Getting Tangled in the Vines
Here are the simple rules most gardeners need most often:
You want to write the genus with a capital letter and italics: Acer.
Next, write the specific epithet lowercase and italics: rubrum.
Then write the full species name with both parts italicized: Acer rubrum, red maple.
Finally, write cultivar names in single quotes, not italics: Echinacea purpurea ‘Magnus’, purple coneflower.
Write common names in plain lowercase unless they include a proper noun: white oak, flowering dogwood, Japanese spikenard, brown-eyed Susan (pictured above). Penn State’s guide recommends lowercase common names in general, with capitalization for proper nouns such as a person, nationality, or geographic place.
Don’t put common names in quotation marks; common names should be plain type and not enclosed in single or double quotes.
So we write:
Correct: Rudbeckia triloba, brown-eyed Susan
Not Correct: Rudbeckia Triloba, “Brown-Eyed Susan”
Correct: Liriope muscari ‘Variegata’, lilyturf
Not Correct: Liriope muscari ‘Variegata’, variegated lilyturf
Did you catch it? That last one may feel surprising. When a common name applies at the species level, cultivar traits such as variegated foliage should not be folded into the common name. The plant is still lilyturf, and ‘Variegata’ tells you which lilyturf.
When Common Names Fib a Little
Some common names suggest relationships that are not botanically true. Take flowering maple as an example. Plants in the genus Abutilon (pictured above, left) are called flowering maples because their leaves resemble maple leaves, but Abutilon and Acer, true maples (pictured above, right), belong to completely different plant families.
This is why plant-name writing can feel a bit like detective work. Daylily is not a lily. Lilyturf is not turf grass. Eastern red cedar is not a true cedar. Botanical names help us peek behind the nickname.
Plant Names With Good Stories
Some botanical names come with stories that make them easier to remember.
Take Franklinia alatamaha, Franklin tree. This small flowering tree was named for Benjamin Franklin, and the species name refers to Georgia’s Altamaha River, where John and William Bartram found it in the 1700s. The Arnold Arboretum notes that all living Franklin trees descend from seed collected by William Bartram, and the species is no longer known in the wild.
That’s a lot of history packed into two words: a Founding Father, a Southern river, a father-and-son plant exploration, and a conservation story that still matters.
Or consider Iris tectorum, Japanese roof iris. The specific epithet tectorum means “of roofs,” and Duke Gardens explains that European visitors encountered it growing on thatched roofs in Japan in the 1870s. Despite the common name, the species is originally native to China.
Suddenly Iris tectorum isn’t just a name. It’s a rooftop garden with purple flowers.
The Real Reason to Care
Writing plant names properly isn’t about correcting people at parties. Please don’t become that gardener!
It’s about clarity, curiosity, and confidence. Proper names help us choose the right plant for the right place. They help us avoid mix-ups between look-alikes, sound-alikes, and “my grandmother called it this” plants. They help nurseries, gardeners, designers, extension agents, and plant lovers speak the same language.
Common names bring warmth. Botanical names bring precision. A good garden conversation has room for both.
So the next time you see a plant tag with italics and quotes, don’t panic. Read it like a tiny biography. The genus tells you the group. The specific epithet tells you the species. The cultivar name tells you the special selection. The common name gives you the friendly nickname.
And sometimes, tucked inside all those syllables, there’s a story about a river, a rooftop, a scientist, a place, or a gardener who loved a plant enough to give it a name.
