In article ,
Malcolm Ogilvie wrote:

It may not be essential, but it is certainly helpful for understanding
if, when gardeners are discussing a plant, they use the same name and
don't, if possible, use the name of a completely different plant!

Which is precisely why we gardeners (amateur and professional) and
botanists (ditto) use the Latin names when we are concerned about
being precise, or when there is likely to be confusion.

As any competent horticulturalist or botanist knows, the arrogant
and offensive[*] attempt of a a UK-based caucus of botanists to
define a standard set of names and insist on their use is both
practically and scientifically nonsense.

That is because the UK is NOT isolated, despite what the Little
Englanders would like to believe, and we gardeners and botanists
are perpetually seeing references to the same species in sources
from many different English-speaking countries (as well as those
in other lanuages).

The internationally agreed set of scientific names for plants is
Botanical Latin - go and look it up, since you don't seem to
believe me. The English names are context-dependent - and, for
the advantages of THAT, go and look up the uses of constructive
ambiguity in linguistics.

Learn to live with it. In what must now be nearly 20 years, I
have seen virtually nobody else on this group ever admit to having
trouble with that distinction.
[*] It is arrogant and offensive because it is based on the premise
that the Great Unwashed British Public are too stupid to learn to
use Latin names, and because it is a change that is being attempted
to be forced on people by a self-elected group who claim that they
have the right to tell everyone else what to do.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.