GARDENERS LATIN

Latin names may sometimes look confusing or irrelevant, but many of them give important clues about where a plant is found, its colour, flowering times, leaf pattern, natural habitat and all sorts of other information extremely useful to the gardener. If you want a plant for a shady place, choose one with a name ending in sylvestris ('of woods'), while if your garden is dry, look out for the suffix epigeios ('of dry places'). And steer clear of any plant whose Latin name ends in infestus.