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Re: A Pet Peeve and Need Identification Help

>Vegetables are different because there are (relatively)
so few and most people understand which is which; but even so I've
seen 'Bright Lights' listed in catalogues under Beet, Chard and
Spinach.<

Hmmmm? I can't imagine why anyone would list it under spinach, which is a totally different genus/species.

But beets and chards are both Beta vulgaris, so the confusion is understandable. Particularly if Bright Lights, say, is the only chard in the catalog. I can easily see how the copywriter would group it with the beets in such a case.

It also highlights another problem, when identifying veggies. The variatal name is the key. But that is almost always expressed as a common name. So, in this case, Bright Lights Chard is actually more descriptive than the botanical name.

Then, too,  important taxonomic clues that would be contained in a flower's botanical name, are missing. So, all tomatoes are (maybe) Lycopersicon lycopericon (or one of three other possibilities that are being argued about right now). But any foliage descriptors, such as potato leaf, are done in the vulgate. In a similar vein, we don't want to begin discussing the number of different plant types that belong to the Alium cepa; aggregatum group.

As to the more general topic, there's an aspect I'm surprised nobody else has mentioned. When I started garden writing back in 1999, I always inserted the bontanical names. And the editors just as consistently removed them. By and large they still do.

So now I mostly don't include them. And you know what? I have never had an editor come back to me and ask, "hey, where are the scientific names." So, before we do anymore hand wringing about what a terrible job we are doing as writers, perhaps we need to look to the people we work for instead.


Brook 
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