April 7, 1995
Selecting and Planting Bedding Plants
Home gardeners will soon be buying bedding plants from local garden centers and greenhouses. Bedding plants include annual flowers and vegetables. Selecting strong, healthy plants and proper planting should help insure a successful start to the gardening season.
Latin Names
Do you panic when faced with Latin plant names? Contrary to the belief of many, Carl von Linne, the creator of botanical nomenclature, was trying to make things easier for plant lovers. His Latin names for plants often include an adjective that describes some physical attribute of the plant. Von Linne classified plants according to physical similarities and assigned each a standard two-part name, or binomial. Thousands of plants were categorized based on the structure of their sexual parts. He believed in the system so much that he Latinized his own name to Carolus Linnaeus.