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In botanical world, names really do matter
During a recent “Across the Mountains” (upcoming Sylva Herald magazine set to debut in late June) geographical expedition, Nick asked me if a bush that was about to bloom was mountain laurel, and I gave him the best answer I could: Yes and no.
It just depends on who you’re talking to. Lots of people, and most flower books, call it that. Many who are from Jackson County’s Canada section, however, call it “ivy,” a name that those from someplace else generally use to mean the fast-growing vine that adorns brick buildings on college campuses.
And what non-Jackson County natives call “rhododendron” is known locally (at least in Canada community) as “laurel.”
Early botanists realized the necessity of creating a system that would eliminate such ambiguity. Plant names would be determined, they decided, through a system of binomial nomenclature (a fancy way of saying each would have two names). A plant would get a genus name, which it would share with close relatives, and its own descriptive species name. By putting the two together, each would have a unique name. Scientists chose Latin for the names of all plant (and animal) species because it was no longer in use and therefore not subject to change.
And that brings us back to Nick’s original question.
The shrub he asked about is a member of the heath family, one of our most well-represented (and most confusing) vegetative groups. When someone who grew up around here says “laurel,” they are usually talking about Rhododendron maximum, a broad-leafed evergreen that sports pale pink flowers in mid-July rather than Kalmia latifolia (the one in bloom now) that has smaller, cup-shaped flowers and is called mountain laurel in wildflower books. If they mean the showier purple rhododendron (Rhododendron catawbiense) that blooms in profusion in late May and early June up on the Blue Ridge Parkway, they say “purple laurel.”
The ivy that is a vine is Hedera helix and the ivy they talk about in Canada is Kalmia latifolia. If you ever hear someone talk about “breaking ivy,” remember that K. latifolia (a.k.a. mountain laurel) is a sturdy shrub that has historically been used to supplement farming income – limbs of the evergreen are bundled and sold for use by florists.
And if you hear talk of honeysuckle furniture, a popular Mountain Heritage Day item, don’t think of the prolific vine with sweet-smelling flowers loved by children and bees. Remember that mountaineers say “honeysuckle” when they mean another rhododendron species – R. calendulaceum, better known as flame azalea.
We don’t have to limit ourselves to the hard-to-name heath family to find confusing plant monikers. Calycanthus floridus, an attractive shrub that’s just past its bloom, is called both “sweetshrub” and “bubby.” Eupatorium maculatum, part of the late summer landscape, is known either as “joe-pye weed” or “queen-of-the-meadow.”
You might think trees would be easier to pinpoint, but they’re not. Our earliest blooming native tree, Amelanchier arborea, is variously called “sarvis,” serviceberry,” “juneberry” and “shadbush.” The one that waits until November to display its spidery yellow blossoms is Hammemelis virginiana, called witch hazel in most books but known locally as “beadwood.”
And then there are the oak trees. I’ve heard Quercus coccinea called both “scarlet oak” and “Spanish oak,” while Quercus rubra var. borealis is known either as “mountain oak” or “northern red oak.” One of my biology professors used to tell us to remember the oaks’ genus name by thinking of “queer cuss,” a description he said was accurate of the oak family’s many peculiarities.
“A rose is a rose is a rose,” wrote poet Gertrude Stein. William Shakespeare told us that “a rose by any other name would still smell as sweet,” and asked “What’s in a name?”
Those two should have done some research down at the Cafe. Then the Bard would have known that honeysuckle by another name does not good furniture make and that precise names serve to eliminate a lot of floral confusion.
And, if Stein had been in Sylva instead of Paris, she might be remembered for saying, “A Kalmia is a laurel is an ivy.”
Call them what you will, but be advised that profuse stands of Kalmia/ivy/mountain laurel are currently staging a pink-blossomed show along Charleys Creek Road and that orange-flowered flame azalea/honeysuckle is in bloom as well.
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