The Firefly Dictionary of Plant Names: Common and Botanical - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1552976025 ISBN 13: 9781552976029

Publisher: Firefly Books, 2003

Synopsis

This is the only guide needed to find the name of a plant. Using whichever name is already known -- common or botanical -- readers will quickly find the name needed using the extensive cross-reference lists. From alpines to trees and shrubs, from houseplants to wild flowers, this essential gardening reference covers an amazing 30,000 terms over 448 pages, all in a compact, easy-to-carry size:

Quickly find the common or botanical equivalents of plant names
Easily convert common plant names to their botanical equivalents -- and vice versa
Inclusive coverage of North American, European and UK common names, plus earlier versions of common names
Explanations of Latin help to identify whole groups of plants at a glance
Convenient pocket-sized format, with a wipe-clean flexibind cover, makes it easy to carry along on visits to the garden center or nursery

About this title

About the Author

Harold Bagust is a well known gardener with over 60 years' experience growing and studying plants. A regular contributor to international gardening journals and broadcasts, he is an expert on pelargoniums and the author of seven books, including The Gardener's Dictionary of Horticultural Terms.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Preface

This publication covers over 30,000 plants grown in the English-speaking areas of the world together with much of Europe. It is intended as a working tool for both amateur and professional gardeners as well as for plant lovers wishing to find the botanical name when only the common name is known, or vice versa.

For easy reference the book is divided into fourteen different plant sections, with lists of common names in the first half of the book and the botanical equivalents in the second half. In order to keep the number of pages within manageable proportions, the categories and individual plants included are those most frequently purchased from nurseries and garden centers in the UK and North America. Vegetables have been excluded because very few customers use botanical terms when buying them or their seeds. A certain amount of duplication is inevitable if an unacceptable amount of cross-referencing is to be avoided. Some herbs, for instance, may appear also under 'Wild Flowers' or 'Popular Garden Plants', and 'House Plants' includes species from several categories.

Since the use of common or vernacular plant names is often restricted to a limited region or to special groups, botanical names have become widely employed as a method of positively identifying plants. Continual revision has however, resulted in the frequent occurrence of synonyms of the botanical name. These have been included in many instances to reduce confusion caused by consulting old reference books still to be found on the bookshelves of many gardeners of my generation and earlier.

The standard binomial system has been used throughout -- the genus, or family name followed by the specific epithet or species name, identifying the characteristics or growing areas of that plant; for sub-species a third name can be applied and also a varietal name, for example Pinus sibirica pumila glauca (Dwarf blue Siberian pine). In some publications the varietal name appears in italics, in a different typeface, within quotation marks, or preceded by the abbreviation var. Here, where varieties are included, we have used the system widespread in the USA and elsewhere of adding the varietal name after the epithet using the same typeface and without quotation marks.

Some symbols used in the book are:

x before or within a name indicates a sexually pollinated hybrid

+ indicates a graft hybrid

The Scottish and Irish prefixes "Mac", "Mc", and "M" are united with the rest of the name thus, macintyre, macaulay, maginty.

The Irish prefix "O" is united with the rest of the name thus, oleary.

To avoid confusion, the abbreviation St is listed alphabetically as Saint.

Edition details

• Publisher: Firefly Books
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1552976025
• ISBN 13: 9781552976029
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 440