I have had issues with the proper use of its and it's. I keep a dictionary on my desk rather than using a spell checker. I may learn the correct spelling of 10 other words while checking for one. Today is my birthday at 71 and I am not really concerned about appearing to be highly educated provided my general expressions can be deciphered.

Happy Birthday Jerry.......your posts often contain good common sense.

Happy birthday, Jerry.

Yes, happy birthday, Jerry!

When a genus has a plural indicator, it should not be capitalized. So hostas.

Otherwise Hosta should always be capitalized. Genus capitalized, species not, cultivar name capitalized and enclosed in singular quotes.

I have hostas in my garden. I have Hosta 'Little Nut' in my garden.

Hosta venusta 'Tiny Tears'

Actually the venusta should be italicized. Most people don't simply because it's not easy to do it on the computer.

At the beginning of any article the genus should be spelled out: Hosta. After the first spelling it can be abbreviated: H.

All common vernacular plant names should be in lower case unless they are derived from surnames or proper nouns, such as Japanese iris vs bearded iris.

OK Zuzu, find something wrong with what I said above.

Isn't this fun?

Sounds good, Polly. It's contrary to some of my rules, but you say it with such authority that I'm totally convinced!

Oh, and I forgot to acknowledge Connie's wonderfully logical explanation of the "iris garden" vs. "irises garden" dilemma. Adjectives never take the plural form in English, as far as I know.

Somewhere through the iris forums I learned species iris I.germanica and cultivars 'Wabash' are written differently. It makes little difference in describing them except it gives a casual observer the idea of the writer being knowledgeable of the subject.

LOL, Zuzu. I'm probably wrong on half of it. But when you're not sure, just say it with conviction.

I believe there is a saying about that ~ "If you can't dazzle them with brillance, then baffle them with BS"

Moby ,love the quote.

There are many shortcuts on the forums. When you consider how much typing we all do all day , there is a need for lowercase on occasion.
FYI , I lowercase when I am typing and eating a sandwich..

I confess to over use. Ooooops I just did it again. What are we doing up in the middle of the night?

I sugger from the 'early rizer geezer' disease.Wake at 1AM toss and turn til 3 AM get outta bed at 4 AM.

Thanks Moby, I'm going with that one.

Paul, you and Jo should rig up lights outside so you can garden at 3AM.

I dont mind an early rise in April and May.I do have a problem with the 3 hours until daylight now.I get into trouble creating gardens and making lists of lilies and astilbes etc.
Its my usual deep winter activity.I will really be nuts in Feb if I dont slow down.

I was very emphatically taught in grammar school that the plural of "iris" is "iris" -- it's one of the few where the singlular is also the plural, and it was used as the example by my teacher. And I'm about to turn 67 so that was a long, long time ago! But as soon as I got into the actual flowers and started exploring the different websites I discovered that all the growers use "irises" as the plural -- and that's OK with me. The one I find interesting, though, is Keith Keppel. In his writings he will say "iris(es)". I like that...

Very smart of Mr. Keppel. Cover all the bases.

Thanks Betty...I feel slightly vindicated.

And then there are those poor misguided souls who add an apostrophe before the "s" for every plural, as in "iris's" or "rose's," as if the iris or rose owns something.

I will be honest I have not waded through all the info in the other responses, but in my wading I did not see what I was taught in school. The example given in school was with the word, 'fish', I equate it to iris. I was taught it was proper to use the the word fish for multiple fish, but if the person wanted to indicate there was more than one variety of fish then it was proper to use the word fishes. So to use the word fish as a plural was more of a generic term for multiple fish. If one was trying to draw attention to the fact there were different types of fish then the word fishes was proper. I see iris and irises in the same sense.
Really do not know the right or wrong of the teaching I received. It just works well for me. Sorry for the punctuation issues.

K

So we have a clump of iris, but many irises. Many in clumps (grin).