It is over 300 years since the birth of a Swede Carl Linnaeus(1707-1778).  His father’s garden ‘inflamed his mind from infancy with an unquenchable love of plants’ that led to a nickname ‘Little Botanicus’.

In 1735 he published his first edition of ‘Systema Naturae’ a classification system for all living things followed by ‘Species Plantarum’ dealing with plants and horticulture. He authored many botanical books and his library was used as the basis to found the Linnaean Society of London which is still going strong and recently published:

‘Order out of Chaos’ Linnaean Plant Names and their Types

By Dr Charlie Jarvis

Linnaeus devised his class system for plants based on the number and arrangement of the male and female parts of a flower, his so called ‘sexual system.’ For example the ‘Sweet William’ – Dianthus barbatus has 10 stamens per flower and is in the Linnaeus class Decandria. The name Dianthus barbatus comes from Greek Di the god Zeus and anthos meaning a flower. barbaratus means bearded and refers to the hairs in the mouth of the flowers. The Sweet William was widely cultivated in the mid 18th Century and had a number of garden form of which Linnaeus lists at least 10 including albo white, roseo pink and flore multiplici a double flowered variety.

• Let Linnaeus encourage you to look closely at plants and Flowers in particular

• Consider what is behind the name of your plant and how and why it has been chosen