Gardener's Latin

Discover the origins, lore and meanings of botanical names with this lexicon of "pithy explanations of words that confront every plant tag reader" (The New York Times Book Review).

For more than a decade, gardeners have been turning to Bill Neal's beautiful little book Gardener's Latin. Neal understood that as Latin terms began appearing with increasing frequency on nursery tags and gardening catalogs, gardeners would need help. So he weeded through the Latin words that describe and distinguish among plants and flowers and compiled a volume of select, brief, clear definitions.


Learning to navigate the jungles of botanical Latin will not only make you an expert in identification, but also teach you a great deal about the plants themselves. Gardener's Latin leads you down the path from abbreviatus to zonatus, turning aside here and there to point out little-known horticultural facts and fables and the wisdom of gardeners from Virgil to Vita Sackville-West.