There’s no need to be intimidated by scientific tree names. You’re already comfortable with many Latin names, for example magnolia, hydrangea or rhododendron. Latin naming conventions are a formalized, straightforward and sensible method for identifying individual species. Once you’ve become accustomed to scientific names, they’re easy and informative. Our modern English has replaced the Roman word quercus with oak. The scientific community has reverted to the ancient Latin as a means of standardization for clear and unambiguous global communication.
Think of yourself as an individual southern red oak tree. All beech and chestnut trees would be your distant cousins. Other oaks would be your closer cousins. At your family reunion, oaks, beeches, and chestnuts would all be present. You’re all in the same family. Botanical taxonomists have labeled your family the beech family.
Although oaks, beeches, and chestnuts share distant great grandparents, they are divided further into more isolated clans. Taxonomists call these groups genera. You would belong to the Quercus genus along with your close cousins, other oaks. The other side of the family—your distant cousins, the chestnuts and beeches—belong to different genera.
To identify you and your closest relatives we would write your genus name followed by a specific epithet.
Quercus falcata
This would be the official scientific name of you and your closest relatives. The genus is always written first, capitalized, and either italicized or underlined. The specific epithet follows the genus, it is likewise italicized or underlined, but never capitalized. This concatenation would be your species name or Latin binomial. Your species name would uniquely identify you and your closest relatives. Think of it as a kind of group Social Security number.
Minimizing Confusion of Tree Names
Unique names are important when speaking about trees (or any living organism) to eliminate confusion. Here in Hampton Roads some people refer to Quercus phellos as willow oak, and others refer to it as pin oak. For an arborist to diagnose tree diseases or insect problems, it is critical for the tree to be identified correctly. If your veterinarian mistakenly treated your cat for a bacterial pathogen that only infects foxes because he can’t tell a fox from a cat… well, let’s hope there are no such veterinarians.
Sadly, there are plenty of self-professed arborists who cannot tell one species of oak from another. Hiring them to remove an undesirable tree may be acceptable, hiring them to provide tree care services is questionable.
How to Write a Common Tree Name
Now that we have the scientific Latin naming convention out of the way, let’s think about how we refer to our trees in common parlance. Quercus falcata is commonly known as southern red oak, although in some southern states, it is commonly called Spanish oak. Notice carefully how I wrote the common names. All common tree names are written in lowercase letters unless the common version contains a proper name, which is always capitalized. Here are a few examples containing proper names:
- Japanese red maple
- Darlington oak
- Callery pear
- English walnut
Here are examples of common tree names which are not capitalized;
- red maple
- northern red oak
- common pear
- black walnut
Here is the interesting part. Common tree names, when heard in normal conversation can be confusing. You’re being told a small lie every time you hear eastern redcedar, yellow-poplar, sweetgum or crapemyrtle. Eastern redcedars are junipers not cedars, yellow-poplars are more closely related to magnolias than poplars, sweetgums are not true gums and crapemyrtles are not true myrtles.
Oh my! Why the mistaken identities? North American botanical misnomers arrived soon after the Europeans. Innocently enough, they named the local plants after those with which they were familiar. Trained botanists they were not! Unfortunately we’re stuck with many common tree names that inaccurately describe the plant, but we have a fix when writing the names.
You may already see the solution.
I wrote eastern redcedar not eastern red cedar; yellow-poplar not yellow poplar; sweetgum not sweet gum; crapemyrtle not crape myrtle. When a common name is misleading or suggests a false evolutionary relationship we write it with a hyphen or as a single word.
There is no definitive guide to writing common botanical names, but hopefully by following the convention above we can minimize confusion.
If you want help with tree identification or naming conventions, check out vTree or the USDA Plants Database. Alternatively, if you have a picture you can email it to me and I’d be happy to identify it for you.
