23 Aug 2024

The PLANTS project: Where do common plant names come from?

Written by Philippa Holdsworth, PLANTS North Team Manager

Pink foxgloves are in the foreground of this photo of the coastline of Burg on Mull, looking across the water to tall mountains.

Foxgloves in the wild, Burg

Ever wondered whether foxes had anything to do with foxgloves? Or why lungwort is called lungwort? In this blog, the PLANTS North Team Manager investigates the origins of some common plant names.

When the PLANTS team are in action cataloguing plants in the gardens of the National Trust for Scotland, we work entirely with the botanical names for the plants – for example, Pinus sylvestris rather than Scots pine. We owe these botanical names to the binomial system for classifying living organisms developed by Swedish biologist Carl Linnaeus (1707–78), who recognised the need for a standard and systematic method in giving each plant a unique name.

Why do scientists need this standardisation? We only have to explore a few examples of common names for plants to discover a whole host of regional variations, plants known by both medicinal names as well as descriptive names, and the same name being used for completely different plants! However, it would be a huge loss if we used the botanical name only. Common names for plants often give an insight into our culture and history, with names evoking ancient lifestyles and beliefs. Our ancestors have named plants after:

the plant’s colour or other features
the plant’s resemblance to animals, objects and body parts
the plant’s uses, including medicine, taste and smell (good and bad)
the habitat, indicating where the plant might be found
the uses of the plant in folklore

A close-up view of a couple of Sarracenia plants growing beside a pool. They look a little like sticks of rhubarb except they have hollow stems with a lid-like leaf growing at the top.

Pitcher plants at Crathes Castle | Image: Susan Bennett

It is in our nature to group things by their similarities, and to identify individual items by their differentiating features. We can describe a plant by its colour or features, but we make a stronger connection with the name when it relates to familiar things in our lives, like everyday objects and animals. Here are a few examples:

Kalanchoe thyrsiflora is also known as the paddle plant (thanks to the shape of its leaves) – find it among the fascinating collection of succulents at Inverewe Garden.
Sarracenia species are also known as pitcher plants (again, very distinctively shaped leaves) – find them in the pond by the glasshouses in Crathes Walled Garden.
Lotus corniculatus is also known as the wonderfully descriptive bird’s foot trefoil (due to the shape of the seedpods on the stalk) or eggs and bacon (due to the very bright yellow flowers).

A close-up of bright yellow bird's-foot trefoil flowers, growing on leafy plants.

Bird’s foot trefoil at Holmwood

Plants and animals

Many plant names relating to animals recall a time when people spent a lot more of their daily lives involved with animals than most of us do today. There are a lot of references to hens and cocks:

henbane (Hyoscyamus niger) – ‘bane’ indicates the plant is toxic, and hens will not eat this.
fat hen (Chenopodium album) – hens DO like to eat this!
cocksfoot grass (Dactylis glomerata) – the clustered seedheads resemble a cock’s foot.
cockscomb (Celosia cristata) – it has a very distinctively shaped flower.
hens and chicks (Sempervivum species) – the mother plant produces tiny buds that establish their own roots nearby.

Other domestic animals feature strongly: sheep’s sorrel (Rumex acetosella) is commonly found in fields like its namesake; lambs’ lugs (Stachys byzantina) has woolly leaves; and cow parsley (Anthriscus sylvestris) is apparently less good than ‘proper’ parsley.

You can see beautiful examples of hens and chicks in the rock garden at Leith Hall, where lamb’s lugs also feature in the rose and alpine borders.

A close-up of a lamb's ear plant showing its furry pale green leaves that look just like a lamb's ears!

A photograph of a rock garden with lots of small blue flowers. There are trees behind it and a gravel path in the foreground.

Then there are other animals that lend their name to plants with distinctive features:

Fox and cubs (Pilosella aurantiaca) is an invasive weed found in roadside verges and may gardens. Its deep orange flowers almost hide the little buds behind.
Hedgehog thistle (Echinops species) – a selection of these spiky beauties greet you as you approach the Welcome Centre at Brodie Castle.
Hedgehog holly (Ilex aquifolium ‘Ferox’) – there is no better place to see a variety of hollies than Drum Castle, where holly is the emblem of the Irvine clan.
Elephant’s ears (Bergenia species) – Greenbank Garden features a National Collection of these large-leaved plants.

A close-up of a leaf of a silver hedgehog holly plant. It has a normal holly shape but the tips of the spikes are creamy white. Droplets of water stand on the waxy leaf surface too.

A close-up of a low-growing Bergenia plant in a flower bed. It has small purple flowers and large waxy green leaves.

Plant features and medicinal uses

The adder’s tongue (Ophioglossum vulgatum) is another example of the features of the plant being likened to an animal, but it also led to the belief that this plant would be beneficial in treating snake bites. More widely, people believed that plants resembling parts of the body could be used to treat ailments of that body part, ie that the plant indicates to us what its beneficial use should be.

The origins of this concept are found as early as 50–70AD, when Greek physician and botanist Pedanius Dioscorides documented all his accumulated knowledge on the use of plants for medicine in five volumes known as De materia medica (The materials of medicine). His work was authoritative for at least 1,600 years, and was promoted by many scholars. This of course influenced the naming of plants, relating them to the body part or ailment for which they were beneficial.

By the early 1600s this concept had a name: the Doctrine of Signatures. In his 1621 book The Signature of All Things, Jakob Böhme, a German philosopher and Lutheran theologian, proposed that God marked objects with a sign, or ‘signature’, for their purpose. Plants that resembled human body parts, animals or other objects were thought to have useful relevance to those parts, animals or objects. The ‘signature’ could sometimes also be identified in the environments or specific sites in which plants grew.

As a result, we have a great many plants named after parts of the body, or their effects on the body:

Lungwort (Pulmonaria officinalis) was used for pulmonary infections as its spotty leaves resemble a diseased lung – find a selection of these in Crathes Walled Garden, especially in the Trough Garden.
Bleeding heart (Dicentra formosa) has a very distinctive flower and was used for pain relief – find them in the American Garden at Fyvie Castle.
The soft leaves of marsh woundwort (Stachys palustris) were applied as an astringent for healing wounds.
Eyebright (Euphrasia rostkoviana) was used for eye infections since the flowers were thought to look like a healthy eye.
Liverwort (Hepatica species) was used to treat liver ailments due again to the appearance of the leaves.
Spleenwort (Asplenium trichomanes) was used to treat the spleen because the spores on the back of the fronds resemble a spleen – find this in the Fernery at Leith Hall and the Bothy Wood at Haddo House.

A close-up of a lungwort plant, showing a small plant with dark green leaves that have white spots all over. The flowers are pink and purple on the same plant.

A close-up of a sprig of a bleeding heart plant, showing a row of tiny flowers hanging off the stem. The flowers are a deep pink and shaped like a heart, with a tiny white 'tear drop' at the bottom.

A close-up view of a liverwort plant, which grows very close to the ground. It has wide, waxy-looking chunky leaves, and grows beside a moss-covered rock, amid woodchips.

Folklore

The appearance or features of a plant might also resemble everyday objects in miniature, and these tend to be associated with magical beings such as fairies and elves.

Fairy flax (Linum catharticum)
Fairy bells or foxglove (Digitalis purpurea) – this may derive from ‘little folk’s glove’.
Fairy’s thimble (Campanula cochlearifolia)
Elfin thyme (Thymus serpyllum)

And let’s not forget their watery cousins:

Mermaids’ tresses (Spirogyra) – this green algae forms long threads in slow-moving water.

You can mingle with the fairy plants in the Walled Garden at Inverewe, the Evolution Garden at Crathes and the Herb Garden at Pitmedden.

A small bee flies towards the open trumpets of white foxgloves.

A close-up of small blue flowers shaped like little bells.

An underwater seaweed-like plant with long, dense green strands.

Who needs common names?

As a PLANTS team member with a limited education in Latin, I sometimes find myself trying to reconcile an unfamiliar plant in a border with a list of plants that have historically been planted there. I scan a list of botanical names and they might not convey much to me. In Inverewe Walled Garden I researched a possibility by looking it up on my phone. The results for Dierama pulcherrimum show me useful pictures and also a very descriptive common name: angel’s fishing rod. It so clearly describes the long stems with the beautiful pendulous flowers, that I immediately connect the name with the plant.

Angel's fishing rod plants grow in a garden border. They are quite tall and have pink/purple flowers which are suspended as if on the end of a fishing rod.

Angel’s fishing rod | Image Linda George, Shutterstock

Did I say we work exclusively with the botanical names? Maybe I meant that we report our findings using the botanical names. Those interesting, practical and evocative common names have a place on the PLANTS project after all.

Useful further resources

Gregory J Kenicer, Dictionary of Scottish Plant Names: An A to Z, Royal Botanical Garden Edinburgh, 2023
James Armitage, RHS Practical Latin for Gardeners, Royal Horticultural Society, 2016

Plant Listing at the National Trust for Scotland (PLANTS) is the biggest horticultural audit project undertaken by the Trust and aims to celebrate, protect and better understand the flora and vegetation across our gardens and designed landscapes.