I bought 6 varieties of lavender to plant along along a retaining wall.
Several different colors. The leaves on the plants are even different.
I typed up a plant chart and noticed several shared the same Latin name.
Lavandula x intermedia cv.
Is that a place holder name? Used until they formally name it?
Or are these considered the same plant?
Also, can you define the Latin words: vindis, lanta, and stoechas?
Is there an online Latin translator? I only need to look up a few words from plant labels.
Many thanks!
I typed these from the plant label.
Yellow Lavender
Lavandula viridis
(5 plants, creamy yellow flower)
Wooly Lavender
Lavandula lanata ‘Boiss’
(4 plants, long dark purple flower)
Edelwiess Lavender
Lavandula x intermedia cv.
(3 plants, long white flower stem)
White Grosso Lavender
Lavandula x intermedia cv.
(5 plants, long white flower stem)
Spanish Lavender
Lavandula stoechas
(5 plants, short dark purple flowers)
Hidcote Giant Lavender
Lavandula x intermedia cv.
(3 plants, long light purple flower stem)
Lavandula is the genus name, the Lavender plants
viridis, lanata, and stoachas are "trivial names’, which together with the genus name identify species of lavender.
I believe intermedia is not a trivial name but rather the signifier, wiith the x, that the plant is a hybrid, a cross between two natural species. ‘Boiss’ is a varietal name; presumably the intermedia forms also have varietal names which were not given.
Kale, collard greens, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, brussels sprouts, and kohlrabi are all the same species, Brassica oleracea. Squashes and pepper both have only 2-4 species. Plants are weird.
x stands for a crossing and cv. is for cultivar. The same species cultivars are the same plant in the way that a wolf, a chihuahua, and a bullmastiff are the same thing.
No, it means “Lavender cross, intermediate cultivar.” It’s the formal name for the lavandins, hybrids of L. angustifolia and L. latifolia (English lavender and spike lavender).
Lanta: I think you mean “lanata,” which means “woolly.” Vindis: again, I think you mean “viridis,” which means “green”; I don’t think there is a Latin word “vindis,” though it might be a variant on viridis, or a latinization of “Windisch.” Stoechas means “light gray.”
There are lots. Just Google it. However, Latin can be tricky, even more so than most online translations.
thanks everyone! I’m going to bookmark this thread. I’ve been wondering about formal plant names for years. Nice to finally know what some of it means.
Nametag, sorry for the poor Latin word spelling. I got them right on the plant chart, and typed my question too quickly. It’s easy to drop a letter in unfamiliar words. Letters matter even when the word is unknown.
I forgot to include Provence lavender in my OP. Provence is the common plant easily found at Walmart or Home Depot in the Spring. That was the first type of lavender that I planted years ago.
Provence is also Lavandula X Intermedia It doesn’t have the ca. (cultivar) notation.
I had to order the other varieties of lavender from an organic nursery online.
So a species name consists of ( typically ) a binomial - Genus ( i.e. Lavandula - always capitalized ) + specific epithet ( viridis - always in lower case ). As noted a single plant species can have numerous human-created cultivars, created in a variety of ways, including mutant strain of a single species bred for a desirable characteristic, species crosses or even genus crosses.
Exactly. What Tamerlane learned as “specfic epithet”, I learned as “trivial name” – but the point is that it’s not “species name”, whch means the full binomial of “Genus name + s.e./t.n.” There are hundreds of species wth the s.e./t.n. of “maximus”, from the Indian elephant and a half dozen fossil dinosaurs to the giant otter shrew and a diatom almost large enough to see with the najked eye. It’s the full Linnaean binomial that identifies the species.
And in the case of plants, typically the binomial identifies species of wild plants, many of which may grow naturally in a number of varieties. Human-produced crosses and cultivars are termed as Tamerlane and others have noted above.
Cultivated varieties (cultivars) or ochids can get particularly complex. This page gives some general information about how cultivars, including hybrids, are named.
Some orchid hybrids are the result of a series of crosses between up to six different genera. By convention, intergeneric hybrids are named by a combination of the genus names; a cross between a Cattleya and a Laelia is known as a Laeliocattleya. But beyond a trigeneric cross the names become too unwieldy and other naming conventions are used.
You have excellent information on Latin naming conventions already; about all I can offer is a little insight into why they’re still used. Various plants can cover huge territories, and can be known by many different common names. The Latin names are used because they are more specific and likely to refer to one particular plant, regardless of how it is known in different areas.
thanks everyone! I’m going to bookmark this thread. I’ve been wondering about formal plant names for years. Nice to finally know what some of it means.