Latin for all the reasons everyone has previously posted. However, I make a point, with my signage, of starting with the Latin, but also using common names to help customers LEARN the Latin.

Team Latin also, it is difficult to know for sure which plant you are talking about if you use the common name.

Latin for precision.

Both for me, depending on who I'm talking to at the moment. I'm familiar with many Latin names due to having a plant sales biz so it's a necessity. Many customers still rely on common names so it's just as important to learn what they are so I can help them out. Plus, some common names are fun! And yep, as someone above said, some common names refer to one plant in an area but to a completely different plant in another area/state. Might as well continue to grasp them all for future knowledge (even though I'm often saying, "hmmm...that sounds familiar to me but can't place it at the time."

Shoe -off to happily broadcast some Festuca arundinacea (tall Fescue); grateful I'm not spending my time pulling Cynodon dactylon (Bermuda grass a.k.a. a whole host of other common names not acceptable for the public eye)

If you change countries Latin is essential. However it's useful to know the local common names when talking to non-gardeners. It's also essential to use common vegetable names at the greengrocers! Have you any Petroselinum crispum? doesn't get you far.

I agree with Shoe. I believe gardeners should know both. As others have said, the common names can be misleading if not incorrect. When seeking out a plant by its Latin name, you are more likely to get exactly that plant. So, when it comes to ensuring you are really getting the plant you desire, dig deeper and purchase by Latin name but also know the common name so to relate to those who do not know the Latin names.

You all have me chuckling right out loud!!

Latin, if there is any need whatsoever to specify what plant you're talking about.

However, once we agree on what plant we're talking about, any old nickname is sufficient, and often easier to pronounce or more fun. And no one thinks you're "putting on airs" for being exact.

I can testify that almost ANY given common name has several, or dozens, or even hundreds of plants that have been called that. They may be unique and specific names regionally, but as soon as you step outside one region, "tickseed" could mean many different things spanning six genera.

"Kiss Me Over The Garden Gate" is a fun name, and only applies to two species as far as I know, but anyone in any country can look up "Persicari orientalis" or "Persicaria amplexicaulis" and know whether it is a 6"-12" Zone 5 perennial or a 36"-48" Annual. Which I would like to know before putting a lot off effort into establishing it!


You can call me Corey or Rick or Dick or Rich or Ricky, even though there are millions of "Rick"s and thousands of "Corey"s.

But when it MATTERS who I am, like whether I've paid my taxes or received a specific med or which "Rick" it is that the Governer just pardoned, I want Richard Thomas William Corey, SSN 123-456-7890 to get that reciept or that pill or that pardon!

For example, when trading or giving seeds away, if the first person who gives it away only includes an ambiguous name, anyone who grows it or its descendents will have to say "yeah, it's pretty and looks kinda like this or that, but I have no idea what it is".

I have a small yard and I don't grow any NO_ID seeds.

To some degree, if you know a Genus or Family name, you have some idea what to expect and how to propagate or care for it. And you can look it up, and benfit from the experience of generations of gardeners.

Latin, please.

Was dismayed to notice that some plant tags no longer have the Latin names.

Many plant tags no longer have the latin names. And it has been my recent experience that in big box stores or even local nurseries the employees often have no clue what you're talking about when you ask for it by the latin name. And forget about the cultivar.
Heck, these days the individual pots don't even have tags in them or on them. And don't you just love it when you go to get bedding plants (annuals) & the pot has a label glued on it that says ---- ANNUAL.

Sigh.

"No name plants" to me would be "no sale plants".

Even worse is when a mail-order nursery (or big-box store) puts a fancy, in-demand expnsive hybrid label on a no-name genric species! That's a sin of commission, not omission.

Or the pot label says "1 quart perennial".

I've been seeing a lot of those, Renee. Also, "rose."

If they are "lumpers", I'm a "splitter". According to Wikipedia, Charles Darwin used those terms in a letter in 1857, so the problem goes back at least 154 years.

But this is the quote I liked best:

"splitters make very small units – their critics say that if they can tell two animals apart, they place them in different genera … and if they cannot tell them apart, they place them in different species. … Lumpers make large units – their critics say that if a carnivore is neither a dog nor a bear, they call it a cat." [1]

[1] Simpson, George G. "The Principles of Classification and a Classification of Mammals." Bulletin of the AMNH, vol. 85, p. 23. 1945. American Museum of Natural History, New York.

I like that Rick.

I probably take "splitting" too far: the flavor of OCD pronounced "O Seed D".

But I have fun.

From what I'm hearing from a lot of people the problem is rampant in plants being mislabeled...I've found it a lot in salvias. I've found it in buying a 6 pack of Japanese eggplant seedlings which turn out to not be the Japanese. It seems to almost be epidemic from the number of people I've heard this from. Is it negligence? Is it workers who don't really know what the plant is they're sticking labels in / on? Is it filling orders for one plant that they don't have with another similar plant that they do have and purposely sticking the wrong label in it? All of the above?

I vote that it is a combo of all of the above.