Since the first printing of Carl Linnaeus's ''

Species Plantarum ' (Latin for "The Species of Plants") is a book by Carl Linnaeus, originally published in 1753, which lists every species of plant known at the time, classified into genera. It is the first work to consistently apply binomial names and was the ...

'' in 1753, plants have been assigned one

epithet An epithet (, ), also byname, is a descriptive term (word or phrase) known for accompanying or occurring in place of a name and having entered common usage. It has various shades of meaning when applied to seemingly real or fictitious people, di ...

or name for their species and one name for their genus, a grouping of related species. These scientific names have been catalogued in a variety of works, including '' Stearn's Dictionary of Plant Names for Gardeners''.

William Stearn William Thomas Stearn (16 April 1911 – 9 May 2001) was a British botanist. Born in Cambridge in 1911, he was largely self-educated, and developed an early interest in books and natural history. His initial work experience was at ...

(1911–2001) was one of the pre-eminent British botanists of the 20th century: a Librarian of the Royal Horticultural Society, a president of the Linnean Society and the original drafter of the '' International Code of Nomenclature for Cultivated Plants''. The first column below lists seed-bearing species epithets from ''Stearn's Dictionary'', ''Latin for Gardeners'' by Lorraine Harrison, ''The A to Z of Plant Names'' by Allen Coombes, ''The Gardener's Botanical'' by Ross Bayton, and the glossary of Stearn's ''Botanical Latin''. Epithets from proper nouns,

proper adjective English orthography sometimes uses the term proper adjective to mean adjectives that take initial capital letters, and common adjective to mean those that do not. For example, a person from India is Indian—''Indian'' is a proper adjective. Etymol ...

s, and two or more nouns are excluded, along with epithets used only in species names that are no longer widely accepted. Classical and modern meanings are provided in the third column, along with citations to

Charlton T. Lewis Charlton Thomas Lewis (February 25, 1834 – May 26, 1904) was a United States lawyer, author and lexicographer, who is particularly remembered as a compiler of several Latin–English dictionaries. Biography Lewis was born in West Chester, Pe ...

's ''An Elementary Latin Dictionary''. __FORCETOC__

Key

:LG = language: (L)atin or (G)reek :L = derived from Latin, or both Classical Latin and Greek (unless otherwise noted) :G = derived from Greek :H = listed by Harrison, and (except as noted) by Bayton :D = listed in ''Stearn's Dictionary'' :S = listed in Stearn's ''Botanical Latin'' :DS = listed in ''Stearn's Dictionary'', with the word or root word listed in ''Botanical Latin'' :C = listed by Coombes