A CONVERSATION ABOUT - What’s in a name?

I love language and the origin of names for things like plants. The last couple of columns were filled with dire warnings about pesticides and hostile plants. So today I’ll switch to a more playful tone. I have a recurring segment in a podcast I contribute to, called “It’s all Greek to Me”.  Each segment refers to the origin of the Greek/Latin botanical names of plants according to the Linnaean system. This system has been around since the 1700’s and is in common use around the world because it avoids the confusion caused by common names used in different regions.  You can go to the website and look around the index for episodes at https://ccecolumbiagreene.org/gardening/nature-calls-conversations-from-the-hudson-valley.   One fun category of wild plants is the native ground covers. The Mayflower is an unassuming beauty of a low-growing plant. Also known as the Trailing Arbutus, it is formally known as the Epigea repens. This translates to “creeping upon the earth”, which is exactly what they do. Their height maxes out at about six inches, and they form colonies up to two feet wide. They’re a subtle little evergreen with leathery oval leaves that may be up to three inches long. They produce tiny fragrant flowers in great profusion. It was these flowers that dazzled the Pilgrims when they arrived in New England. Cleverly, they named the plant “Mayflower”. It’s still a subject of argument (among those who argue about such things) whether the name came from the name of the ship they arrived on or the time of year the flowers bloomed. If you want to introduce some to your woodlot, don’t try to move them from the wild. The best way to start them is from seed or plants acquired from a good native nursery. They aren’t easy even then because they’re difficult to establish and slow to grow. Once you’ve seen one, if you’re a naturalist at heart, you’ll accept the challenge. You’ll be doing a good deed, because it’s listed in New York State as “exploitably vulnerable” (on the verge of extinction).  

A frequent neighbor of the Mayflower, and much more common, is the Bearberry. It’s another evergreen of small stature. It looks like a miniature shrub, never getting any taller than twelve inches.  The berries and shiny leaves are a beautiful sight on the forest floor in the autumn. It likes poor soil and is good erosion control. It is also resistant to transplanting and tricky to get started. 

One of my favorite features of the bearberry is the whole naming drama the scientists went through for this little bitty plant. We commonly call it bearberry because, like all its cousins in the blueberry family, it’s a taste treat for bears getting ready to hibernate. The earliest plant hunters agreed that it was a good name. They called it Uva ursi. This means “berry of the bear”. Sadly, this was at the beginning of the Linnaean era and Karl Linnaeus himself was maybe a bit of an egoist. He overrode them and  gave the genus the name Arctostaphylos. This translates from the Greek to “berry of the bear”.  He generously allowed the discoverers the honor of keeping their version as the species name.   So the little bearberry has the name Arctostaphylos uva-ursi . Yup… bearberry bearberry. The Native Americans called it Kinnikinnick, and there’s a whole other story for another time. So when you’re hiking in the woods, don’t forget to look down. There are multitudes of treasures there for a curious visitor.