By Mary Shane

For The Vidette

What do you think of when you hear someone mention the “bluebell” flower? I think of Virginia bluebells, which grew in our garden when I was growing up. But there are also Spanish bluebells and English bluebells and “squill.” To make it even more confusing, the term “English bluebells” refers to two distinctly different plants.

Here is another confusing plant name from my garden: I have two mock orange plants. They also are distinctly different shrubs. One is deciduous, and the other retains its leaves year-round. They share a delicious orange-blossom scent when they bloom.

Happily, there is a remedy to solving the puzzle when we talk about plants with the same common name but which are different plants. Each of the two mock orange plants—and the bluebells—has a distinct botanical name.

Botanical names come from a system developed in the 1700s by Carl Linnaeus and now known as the “International Code of Botanical Nomenclature.” It is a system of scientific names that assures that we all know precisely what plant is being described.

Latin was the important language of the time of Linnaeus, so botanical names are written in Latin, though oftentimes Greek is part of the name.

Think of a plant having a last name and a first name. The last name is the genus name and the first name is the species name. Consider the bluebells that grow so prolifically around here: their last name is Hyacinthoides, and their first name is hispanica. “Hispanica” refers to their native land, Spain, hence they are sometimes called “Spanish bluebells.”

Many of us call these rampantly spreading plants “Squill.” But that is another plant altogether, the Scilla siberica.

This nomenclature system provides people around the world a universally accepted name for each single plant.

Philadelphus lewisii is one of the mock orange shrubs in my garden, a large, deciduous bush with flowers that have a delightful orange-blossom scent.

Meriwether Lewis, in 1806, during the Lewis and Clark expedition, collected the seeds of this native plant. Hence, the Philadelphus lewisii is named after him. The plant’s “first name,” Philadelphus, experts say, most likely bears the name of Ptolemy II Philadelphus, the Macedonian king of Egypt, 285–246 B.C. Perhaps confusing, but the Philadelphus genus is comprised of more than 50 species found around the world. Lewis identified and brought this variety home from the expedition.

The other mock orange plant, the one that doesn’t lose its leaves and also has blooms that smell like an orange blossom is the Choisya ternata, named for Jacques Denys Choisy, a Swiss Protestant clergyman and botanist.

A plant’s species name may honor a famous person or it may provide a key to a plant’s characteristics.

Ternata, above, refers to three leaftlets; Viola odorata tells us that the flowers of a violet are perfumed. Hydrangea macrophylla is a hydrangea with large leaves, and Magnolia stellata is an apt name for the starry-flowered magnolias we see in bloom this time of year.

You don’t have to learn Latin to grow beautiful plants. However, knowing a little bit about how and why plants are given their names can be valuable knowledge when you are looking for growing advice or when you are shopping for a plant.

Mark your calendars for the 2017 Grays Harbor Master Gardener Show, May 20-21, at the Elma fairgrounds. At 1 p.m. Saturday, May 20, Sam Benowitz, from Raintree Nursery, will show the best tree fruit and berry varieties for our climate, and Ciscoe Morris brings his signature style to the stage at 1 p.m. on Sunday, May 21.

Mary Shane, a Master Gardener since 1998, lives in the Val Vista area west of Montesano.