Why Latin

Yesterday I found this cool little program, for Macintosh OSX no less, which has definitions for 30,000 Latin words. So far I have found out that cordifolia means late, pulcherrimum means beautiful or handsome as well as a lot of other Latin definitions I needed to know to finish my homework.

I first encountered Latin as a nursing student although most of what I learned was in a shorthand taught to us so we could interpret doctors orders, and use it in our own nurses notes. Things like NPO, nothing by mouth, TID, three times a day in reference to TX, treatment. I may have been told at the beginning of my training what the Latin words for the shorthand were but the reality of working in a hospital soon purged the unnecessary information from my brain.

Down the road I exchanged my fast paced, bright city lights life, for a much more subdued one in the country, complete with kids, a large vegetable garden and sheep. Like I always do I bought a bunch of books to help me figure out this new life.

The gardening books had the Latin names of each plant at the beginning of its description. Some of the names stuck in my head and so did some of the descriptive Latin words at the end of the plant name, meant to give some clue about the plants habitat, its looks, or its growth tendency. Thus, Aster alpinus is a small purple Daisy growing in alpine areas. Polemonium pulcherrimum is a Jacobs Ladder with beautiful bell shaped flowers. Phlox subulata is a spring flower that creeps along the ground.

Last weekend I attended my first class in the Master Gardeners program at UNBC. The instructor told us we should all call plants by their Latin names, not worring about pronunciation, because then we will all know exactly which plant we are talking about. Assuming of course the Botanists haven’t decided that based on new information, the plant should be reclassified.