Latin for Gardeners by Lorraine Harrison

8/17/2018

Truly enjoying this book. In addition to the list of over 3,000 specific epithets that might be helpful for the gardener to know, the author suggests phonetically how to say them, plus gives an example of the use of each one. The color botanical art illustrations are lovely , as you can see from the cover photo. If all of that were not enough, the book contains numerous 1-2 page essays that describe important botanists and key concepts such as which Latinized words are used to describe color and which are used to describe fragrance. Published in 2012 by University of Chicago Press, it would be a lovely gift for a gardener with an interest in learning plant names.

1 Comment

Elliott Rosenthal

9/4/2018 11:45:49 am

Amazing Coincidence! I, too, own and love this book! I recommend it to anyone interested in plant names and in word/name derivations!

Katherine Wagner-Reiss has her botany Certificate from the New York Botanical Garden, where she is a volunteer tour guide.
She has a special interest in native plants and in the scientific and the common names of plants.

She credits Botanary and Missouri Botanical Garden Plant Finder and Wikipedia and Stearn's Dictionary of Plant Names for Gardeners by William T. Stern ( 1992) as the excellent sources of most of the etymologies of plant names on this site.