While studying horticulture

in college we were constantly drilled with identifying plants using their mostly Latin based taxonomy. Somewhere in my parents attic are shoe boxes filled with hundreds (maybe thousands) of flash cards of plants and their Family, Genus and Species. In the beginning, these words very much felt like the dead language Latin represents to most people. But as time went on and my perspective changed I truly grew to appreciate the wealth of information each Latin name contained. Moving to Florida from Wisconsin I was forced to learn an entirely new group of plants and their Latin names gave great insight into their origins, qualities and attributes. Lonicera sempervirens is our native coral honeysuckle. If you were to literally translate its’ name it would be Woodbine (Lonicera) evergreen (sempervirens). Woodbine refers to woody vines so the Latin name tells you that coral honeysuckle is an evergreen, woody vine! Sempervivum tectorum is commonly called “Hen and Chicks”. This cute name indicates the plant has a main floret that produces (asexually) small secondary offspring. Its Latin name provides even more information though. Sempervivum translates to “ever living” and tectorum translates to “roof” (specifically plants that grow on thatched roofs). To me this indicates that “Hen and Chicks” likes dry airy growing medium and under the right conditions they can “live forever.” All this from just a name! How cool.