Naming

For most weeks described in this weblog, the genus names of the plants have been used. These are the first part of the plant's binomial botanical name. Where this is not sufficiently exact, a species name - the second part of the binomial name - could be used instead to characterize the week. Prunus, for example, is an enormous genus, and P. laurocerasus has only the slightest of resemblances for gardening purposes to a flowering cherry, so one could perhaps have a Laurocerasus Week. As it happens, Laurocerasus is also the term for one of the six subgenera of Prunus. Botanical names are not only universal, used around the world, but are also reasonably exact, unlike plants' vernacular names, which are often used for several genera at once or which are often the marketing inventions of nurserymen. Botanical names have a vaguely Latin form, but they are not Latin. Mostly they are not intelligible to someone who speaks or writes the Latin language, and they often use alphabet letters such as K which are not part of the Latin writing system. In autumn, this weblog runs out of dominant plants and we name the remaining weeks more impressionistically.