Common Names For Australian Native Plants

I had an email today giving the new site for the ASGAP (Association of Societies for Growing Australian Plants) Web site. One item of news interested me. There is now a site where one can track down Australian native plants by their common name. Some people are critical of the use of scientific names for plants but often there is no choice because there is no recognised common name.

Australian Plants Common Name Database

Posted at 6:42 PM, 27 October 2006 by Brian Walters

One of the complaints often levelled at growers of Australian native plants is that they seem to insist on referring to plants by their confusing scientific names. Sometimes there is no choice. Many plants just don’t have accepted common names and in other cases, the same common name can refer to several different plants (‘native fuschia’, for example can refer to Epacris impressa, Correa reflexa or Eremophila maculata, depending on who you’re talking to).Still, urging people to grow Archirhodomyrtus beckleri is not likely to result in increased nursery sales of that plant, whereas, recommending ‘rose myrtle’ might. So, perhaps we should use common names more often.

The Australian Plant Common Name Database can help with this – it can track down common names for a wide range of Australian plants. The database works in both directions; ie. you can enter a common name to find out its scientific name or vice versa. It also works at the generic level. For example, enter “Banksia” and the database will return all the common names for the various Banksia species.

Definitely a very useful resource.