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Gardener’s Latin
Mrs. Pike, My high school Latin teacher, tried really hard to make Latin interesting. We even read Winnie the Pooh in Latin, but after two years I decided that I had been tortured enough and just said “no” to learning a dead language. Little did I know that later in life I would really learn to appreciate Latin as a way of naming plants that is logical and precise. Anywhere you go in the world, the name of a plant is the same – if you use Latin.
Many gardeners shy away from Latin in the garden as I did in the classroom. But it does make one feel a bit smug knowing that Rudbeckia is the botonist’s name for black-eyed Susan, and that Echinacea purpurea is the name for purple cone flower. And learning a few Latin names this winter will increase your stature in your local garden club.
Let’s take a look at how the system of names works. The system we use is called binomial nomenclature. Up until the mid 1700’s plant and animals often had long descriptive names that varied from country to country. Then Carl von Linné, a Swedish scientist who also called himself Linnaeus (a Latinized version of Linné) created a simple and consistent system for naming living things, both plants animals. Each organism was given a genus name and a species name.
Linnaeus used two words for each organism. The first, called the genus (plural = genera), the second word in the name is the species. The genus is capitalized, but the species is not, even if it is derived from a name that is capitalized. So canadensis, for example, indicates the plant comes from Canada, or northern regions but is not capitalized. Both genus and species names are italicized.
Each genus (with the exception of Ginko and maybe a couple of others) includes more than one species. The scientific name of maple, for example, is Acer and includes at least 51 species, all with resemblances to each other, primarily in regard to their reproductive parts. When referring to Acer species in print, it is customary to abbreviate the name to the first letter after it has been spelled out once (A. palmatum, for example). Acer spp. Refers to all Acer species.
Knautia macedonia
Pronunciation of scientific names is easy. Just pronounce all the letters you see as you would in English. (Darn it, as soon as I write that, the flower Knautia macedonia, a wonderful purple long-blooming flower, comes to mind and the “K” is not spoken. But you knew that). And it is better to refer to “scientific” names than Latin names, as some names come from the Greek, place names or names of scientists. If you find a new species, you can name it after yourself.
Some scientific names are the same as the common names. Clematis, Delphinium and Hydrangea come to mind. Rosa for rose is pretty close. Many species names give you a clue about the looks or habits of a plant if you know the Latin word. So, for example, any plant with a species name recumbens or prostrata will indicate a plant that is low-growing. Any tree with nana as a species is tiny, like my grandmother, whom we called Nana.
Let’s learn a few scientific genus names.
Trees
Acer = maple
Berberis = barberry
Betula = birch
Cornus = dogwood
Fagus = beech
Fraxinus = ash
Juniperus = juniper
Malus = apple
Quercus = oak
Salix = willow
Flowers
Allium = onion, allium
Aster = aster
Dicentra = bleeding heart
Geranium = Crane’s bill
Heuchera = Coral bells
Lavendula = lavender
Narcissus = daffodil, narcissus, jonquil
Pennisetum = fountain grass
Salvia = salvia, sage
Solidago = goldenrod
Some of those names you already recognized, or see the resemblance to English names. Genus names rarely give much of a clue as to the characteristics of a plant unless you know some of the others in it. But species names are much better clues. Let’s look at a few complete scientific names: Symphtum rubrum tells me that something about this plant is red, probably the flowers (they are). Tagetes erecta tells me that the plant (a marigold) stands straight up. A plant with the species name pendula is a weeping plant, with branches hanging down. A book that translates a few hundred species names is Gardener’s Latin: Discovering the Origins, Lore & Meanings of Botanical Names by Bill Neal. (Algonquin Books, 1992).
Learn a few latin names
There’s not too much to do in the garden just now, so go exploring. Get out a book or go on line and learn a few scientific names. It’s fun, it’s easy, and it will keep your brain from atrophying. Not all nice plants have English names, and you wouldn’t want to avoid a plant for that, would you? And Mrs. Pike will be proud of me.
Carrots
Carrots really are rather splendid. Raw, steamed, or made into a soup, they are almost universally pleasing. I have never encountered a child who would not eat a carrot, particularly if it is raw and slightly gritty, straight from the soil (though there must be some, I’m sure). Given a choice of vegetables sitting for hours on a steam table at a Grade B all-you-can-eat family restaurant, I will always pick carrots and leave the green beans or cheese and cauliflower to accompany my mashed potatoes and meat loaf, though I do try to avoid such establishments. But there is almost nothing one can do that will totally ruin a carrot.
Carrots come in a variety of colors: standard (Don’t-Run-Me-Over) orange, sunflower yellow, plum purple, radish red and ghostly white. Some get huge, others remain small and some are even round. They come from a family of nice plants: dill, Queen Anne’s lace, cilantro, caraway, chervil, anise, parsley and fennel. Those plants are in the Umbelliferae family, and if you squint you can see the word “umbrella” in the name, which is due to the shape of their blossoms – a broad canopy of tiny blossoms. The botanical name for that flower style is “umbel”.
I called Shep Ogden, one of the founders of Cook’s Garden Seeds (www.CooksGarden.com), to talk about carrots. I remembered that he had gone to India many years ago to look for specialty carrots. He told me that, yes, he had found purple carrots there and came back with a pound of seeds. Unfortunately, the carrots bolted (flowered and produced seed) almost right away – and a bolted carrot is not edible. He postulated that the carrots are day-length sensitive, and he had gotten his seeds from a zone where the days are all 12 hours long. Carrots are biennials, and should only bloom in their second year.
Since Shep’s early efforts with purple carrots, others have done breeding programs to develop good purple carrots suitable for North America. I’ve grown Purple Dragon and Purple Haze. My 7-year old grandson, George, grows purple carrots, and loves them for both their color and their flavor.
Sunshine and Orange Carrots
The Fedco catalog (www.fedcoseeds.com) lists a true red carrot that I will try this year, Atomic Red. For sheer size, a yellow carrot called Yellowstone is the most impressive: I have gotten single carrots weighing a pound or more and over a foot long. But even at that size they are not woody or bitter. I got my seeds from Renee’s Garden Seeds (www.reneesgarden.com) where they are part of a mixed-color packet called “Sunshine and Orange”.
There are tricks to growing big carrots, but anyone can do it. First, buy a variety is advertised as growing to be long – 8 inches at least. Prepare your soil so that it is fluffy and deep, with lots of organic matter. Raised beds are excellent for carrots. Thin your carrots early and often. That’s very important. By the 4th of July, carrots should be spaced an inch apart. Keep thinning and eating your carrots, and by mid-summer the carrots should be a couple of inches apart. Keep well watered, and top-dress with a little organic fertilizer around the 4th of July.
If you have heavy soil and can’t seem to get it fluffy, order short carrots. Renee’s Garden Seeds sells one called Round Romeo that should do well for you. Shin Kuroda is a short (5″) Japanese carrot that is sold by Fedco that should do well in heavier soils, too.
Carrots, promoted by Bugs Bunny as the way to have good eyesight, are indeed important for your eyes: a lack of Vitamin A can lead to poor eyesight and even blindness. The beta carotene in colored carrots is converted into Vitamin A in humans. According to a Department of Agriculture web site, 2 plots of carrots each a meter (yard) square, will produce enough carotene to provide an adult with all the vitamin A needed in a year.
I made a nice carrot soup recently, but didn’t measure all the ingredients so if you want to try this, you’ll have to improvise a bit. Cut up a leek (or onion) and a couple of cloves of garlic and sautée them briefly in olive oil in a heavy soup pot. Meanwhile, boil briefly a pound of carrots cut into chunks – until they soften up a bit. Then put them in a food processor and blend them into a puree, adding about a cup and a half of orange juice to the carrots. Add the carrots to the pot with the leeks and garlic, and add about 4 cups of water (or stock, if you prefer).
Other flavorings? I peeled a piece of fresh ginger about half the size of my thumb, grated it, and added to the soup. I added some hot pepper flakes, salt and pepper. I had some Thai tamarind paste, and added a couple of ounces of that – but if it’s not on your shelf, don’t worry. Same for a spice I got in Amsterdam a few years ago: Koek en Speculaas. It’s mostly used for baking and has a nice nutmeg-like scent. I can’t help but fiddle with soups, trying to find my own version of standards. You can play with your favorite spices, too. Fennel is good in carrot soups, and parsley.
So plan on planting carrots. They’re good tasting, relatively easy to grow, and good for you. Order some seeds today.
Tomatoes
Tomato
My passion for gardening is only slightly more powerful than my passion for tomatoes. Yes, I get excited about flowers, especially rare, fragrant and beautiful ones. But tomatoes are really what got me into gardening. Fat, red, juicy tomatoes are what I dream of now, in mid-January. Sandwiches with thick slices of ripe tomato. Little cherry tomatoes that pop sweetness into my mouth as I eat them straight off the vine.
In 2009 my tomatoes – along with most gardeners’ tomatoes throughout New England – were devastated by late blight, which arrived just as they were ripening up. So I was very excited when I got my catalog from Johnny’s Selected Seeds (www.johnnyseeds.com) this year. On the back cover is the description of a newly introduced tomato, one that is resistant to late blight. Late blight causes the fruit and vines to turn black and the fruit to melt into mush in the course of just a few days. Last summer we were lucky – there were, apparently, a few isolated instances of late blight, but there was plenty of sunshine and almost no late blight anywhere. Blights of all sorts are most common during summers that are cool and rainy.
The new tomato from Johnny’s is called the Defiant PhR (F1) tomato. According to the catalog, this tomato has not only “high” resistance to late blight, but also has “intermediate” resistance to early blight. Early blight is what most of us get every year: lower leaves and stems turn brown, plants stop growing, and by summer’s end the plants support the tomatoes hanging on them, but are not producing any more. In my experience, planting tomatoes in new ground (where there have never been any before) pretty much allows one to avoid early blight for a year, perhaps because it is a soil-borne disease that gets on plants by splash up.
I talked to Andrew Mefferd, a product technician at Johnny’s Seeds, who told me that Defiant has very good taste, and is similar to Celebrity, a well known slicer. Apparently folks at Johnny’s Seeds have been working on late blight resistance for some time, and created this hybrid from one of their varieties, and a parent developed at North Carolina State University.
The Defiant is a determinate tomato. That means a tomato generally makes one large crop and then it is finished – which is great if you≠re canning. Apparently Defiant spreads out its fruit a bit more – over a 6-week period, perhaps. Many plum tomatoes are determinate, but most commonly grown tomatoes (Big Beef and Sun Gold, for example) are indeterminate, meaning that they will keep on growing and producing until frost (or blight) finishes them off. The Defiant is a 6-8 ounce tomato – roughly the size of a tennis ball. Andrew told me that it is a plant that can be contained nicely in a tomato cage (unlike some of the indeterminate varieties that can outgrow them in 6 weeks).
The Defiant
I was curious about how tomato hybrids are created, so I called Rob Johnston, founder and Chairman of Johnny’s, who was involved in the creation of the Defiant hybrid. He explained that tomatoes are self pollinating – they have both male and female reproductive parts on the same flower. In order to make a hybrid cross, a breeder has to “emasculate” a bud – remove the male anthers with tweezers or a thumb and forefinger, then pollinate the female pistils with pollen from a different variety of tomato, creating a hybrid.
It sounds like a lot of work to produce hybrids, but Rob Johnston explained that tomatoes are highly productive: a single cross will produce a tomato that might have as many as 200 seeds with that specific genotype. That first generation of a hybrid cross, like the Defiant, are called F1 (First Filial) hybrids. Their progeny, like the offspring of other hybrids, will differ considerably from the parent plant, so if you keep seeds from this year’s hybrid tomatoes, you will get a mix of tomato types. There are no hybrid beans, Rob explained, because each time you make a hybrid cross, you only get 5 seeds or so, making it too labor intensive to produce.
Heirloom tomatoes are open pollinated. That means that you just let the tomatoes use their own pollen to produce the next generation, and they are about the same every year. None of the work of hybridizing described above is involved. So normally heirloom tomatoes are less expensive than hybrids. There are modern varieties of tomatoes that are open pollinated, too, but someone had to breed them out for 7-8 generations, only keeping and re-breeding those that had the same characteristics as the parent.
Growing tomatoes and storing them for use now (I used 6 whole frozen tomatoes last night in a nice winter soup) is a real joy. I will certainly start from seed and grow more than a dozen varieties of tomatoes again this year. And I will include at least half a dozen Defiant hybrid plants as a way of hedging my bets in case of a cool, wet summer with late blight spores in the air.
I accept that growing a resistant tomato is not a guarantee. The catalog specifies “resistance”; not “immunity to”. Given the right circumstances, any tomato, resistant or not, can get the blight. But if this new tomato is tasty and productive, I am happy to buy seeds and grow it every year along with my others. I≠ll hope for a sunny, warm summer, and in another 2 months I≠ll be starting my tomato seedlings. I can”t wait.