Have you ever had trouble finding a specific plant that you are looking for?  Sometimes plants are hard to find because they have so many names.  Plants will generally have both a common name and a scientific name.  Knowing both names can help ensure that you are picking up exactly what you want.

Common names are exactly what you would think, common!  These are the plant names that are widely used and easily remembered.  Common names don't necessarily have a scientific base, but since they are widely used they are usually the easiest way to refer to a plant.  The only problem is that one plant can have several common names.  This makes it difficult when trying to locate a particular item since two people might refer to the same plant by different names.  This is why you will see nurseries label plants with not only a common name, but the plant's scientific or botanical name.

Scientific or botanical names are based in science and are used to refer to a specific species.  Although the words are sometimes hard to pronounce, they can help take the guess work out of trying to locate a particular item.  Scientific names are used internationally, so it means the same no matter where you are.  The reason these are often difficult to pronounce is that they are based in Latin. 

Scientific classification follows this order:  kingdom, division (also referred to as phylum), class, subclass, order, family, genus, and species.  In some cases, it can get more specific with sub-kingdoms and subclasses.  The main thing to know is that the scientific name will also be the species name.  This name will be a binomial (meaning two names).  The first part of the scientific name will be the genus of the plant in it will be capitalized.  The second name will be lower case and will be specific to the species.  For example, a fraser fir tree has the scientific name Abies fraseri.  A fraser fir is part of the Abies Genus.  In some cases, you might see a variety listed that gives more detail about a specific plant.  For example, a flowering dogwood is Cornus florida and a pink flowering dogwood would be listed as Cornus florida var. rubra. 

You could also run across a cultivar.  Cultivars are varieties that are bred by humans to create desirable qualities in the plants.  In a scientific name, a cultivar will be listed in single quotations.  An example of this would be a red maple.  The red maple is known as Acer rubrum and a Red Maple Autumn Flame is Acer rubrum 'Autumn Flame.'  The Autumn Flame is a cultivated variety of the red maple. 

If you have interested in more information about classification, or would like to see the classification of a specific plant, you might want to check out http://plants.usda.gov/classification.html.