Plant Tags & Bachelor's Button

What info is on a plant tag?  Not enough! Gabe & Rebecca talk about why scientific plant names are good for more than just sounding snobby. And they talk about how they've gone wrong with bachelor's buttons. Learn from their mistakes so you can get this showy blue flower to sparkle in your garden!

Episode Transcript

(00:05):
Welcome to leafing out. I'mRebecca.
I'm Gabe.
And we are not experts. We'reamateur gardeners who love to
learn about and talk aboutplants, soil, bugs and
everything that happens in agarden.
So what are we talking abouttoday?
Well, game, let me tell you.
Today,you can't be just conversation
here.

(00:32):
We're talking about plant tags,and bachelors buttons, aka corn
flower, aka centaurea cyanus.
I think you did a terrific jobwith that Latin name.
Thank you so much. I was reallynervous as I was doing it.
Sounded perfect. I'm gonnaattempt to smooth transition
here. So planted, I guess you goto the garden center and you

(00:55):
look at a plant tag, the bigbold name on there is going to
be a common name like basil ordaffodil. And yet there's this
other category of names ofscientific names. Why do they
exist? More importantly, why dowe keep using them on this
podcast?
Right? This is a great question.
You're at your garden center, orwherever you look at the plant
tag. And there's a whole bunchof names and some of them seem

(01:16):
really cute and approachable.
And some of them seemimpenetrable, because they're in
botanical Latin. What is all ofthis information? How are we
supposed to sort this out? Whatdoes this mean? This is
something that I reallyhesitated to dive into when I
got into gardening gotinterested in it. I was like,
Oh, do I really have to look atwhat the Latin names are? Like,

(01:38):
do I have to pay attention tothis? This feels like homework.
It feels like science class. Idid not do very well in biology.
And then I started gettingconfused by the common names. So
I was like, Ah, this is why thisis why scientific names are a
thing.
We keep going back and forth.
scientific names, botanicalLatin names. That's all the same
thing. Yeah. Whenwe talk about the scientific

(01:59):
name of a plant, we're talkingabout the botanical Latin name,
like akinesia, or for bachelorsbutton centaurea cyanus. So the
main thing that I think isuseful about botanical Latin
names is that they are actuallyunique to each plant. And common
names are not always unique. Ifyou go to a nursery and you say,

(02:21):
Hey, I'm looking for bluebells,they might say sure we have blue
bells. Yeah, right this way andthey show you this plant that is
called Okay, I'm going toattempt this highest synthoid is
non scriptor. Oh boy. And thenit another nursery. You could
walk in and say hey, I'm lookingfor blue bells. And they could
show you a totally differentplant. They could show you a

(02:42):
plant that has the scientificname, Martin sia virginica.
These plants are totallydifferent plants, they have
different growth habits. They'renative to different parts of the
world.
They're unrelated I should say.
It's not just like differentvarieties of a similar plant.
They have nothing to do witheach other. They evolved for
millennia, independently. Yeah,they're not cousins, or second

(03:03):
cousins, different families fromdifferent parts of the world.
They just have the same commonname we throw around the word
bluebell, just to apply toanything we kind of think looks
like blue and bell shapedsometimes. So if you know the
scientific name of the plantyou're looking for, you're going
to end up with the right plants.
You're asking the right questionwhen you say do you have

(03:25):
hyacinth oi D is non scripta,which I would be really
intimidated to walk into agarden center and say, but also
a good way to impress peopleon all the other plant podcasts
that we listen to with gardenerswho do this professionally and
are far more qualified to talkabout this than we are. They
always hesitate or ask eachother like I say it this way, do
you say it that way? We call itbotanical lamb. It's not

(03:47):
something that people who spokeLatin when Latin was a spoken
language would have recognizedas Latin it's really like kind
of a new language that has beencreated for plants and animals.
And being a primarily writtenlanguage. I feel like it's not
like, Oh, you pronounce thatwrong? Like you're a noob. It's
more like this is really awritten language and you sort of

(04:08):
do your best at thepronunciation.
That's right. It's primarily awritten language. I only know
that because I just googled it.
Before we move on to the rest ofplant tags. I did a little bit
of googling deep dive on thisand I found so much interesting
information. So I'll share alittle bit of it. I looked at
you'll hear me clicking becauseI'm clicking around in my
millions of open browser tabsright now. Okay, Southern

(04:32):
living.com. Amidst its many datasources, yes, I'm citing my
sources Southern Living calm inthis article about botanical
Latin mentions that not onlywill you not mix up your plant
with something else bymentioning it by scientific
name, but the Latin names tellyou a lot about a plant so they
can tell you where a plant isfrom. For example, you might see

(04:54):
canadensis it's from cat it's meto Canada, you might learn the
color of the flowers or thefoliage, like Alba would mean
white, auria, golden, lutea,yellow rubra red, and then it'll
give you a little clue as tothings like the shape of the

(05:14):
plant. So our Boria would be atree like habit versus compactor
would mean dense.
I feel like we should also say,it's not like every Latin name
has all of this information.
It's more like a Latin namewould have one. It has a single
clue in there. I feel like weshould get back.

(05:36):
Yeah, back to plants.
It's more like I would say a funthing to know when you when you
see a Latin name, and you seeAlba and you're like, Oh, that's
a white one, you feel reallysmart.
That's right. cornus Alba, youknow, that's a dogwood that has
white flowers.
So you're gonna have your commonname, you want to look not just
at that big, bold name, buthopefully there is a scientific

(05:58):
name on that plant tag, whatother information is going to be
on your typical plant tag.
So you're gonna also seeprobably, hopefully, the amount
of sun that a plant will need,it'll probably say full sun,
part, sun, part shade, or fullshade. And maybe there's more
than one of those categories. Soyou might have a little icon
that indicates part shade tofull shade, something like that.

(06:20):
And we're going to talk a littlemore about sun. We talked about
bachelors buttons, right?
Yeah, we're going to talk aboutall the ways we have gone wrong
with full sun plants and notunderstanding what what this
means,but the plant tag, what else is
on there.
So sometimes that's it,sometimes it's just the name of
the plant, the amount of sun andgood luck. Other times, there's
a little more information aboutbloom time and bloom color, it

(06:42):
might say like bright fuchsiablooms late spring to early
summer, maybe it'll tell you itswater needs a little bit. It's
like a moist area like so dryarea. But plant tags are not
going to give you tons ofinformation about the plant.
Right, they're small, they'rejust a little piece of plastic
stuck in there. So there's not aton on there. I admit, I do love

(07:05):
nothing more than a goodresearch project. But I would
say even for the non researchoriented among us, I feel like
this is where the scientificname really comes in handy. So
you're thinking about buying aplant, or you just picked one up
because he thought it lookedcool, you've got the scientific
name from the bottom of thatplant tag, what I like to do is
Google the scientific name plusMissouri Botanical Garden,

(07:27):
they're sorry, and they'rereally terrific. There are other
resources out there. Dependingon where you live, you might
have like a State Agriculturalschool that will have some local
information. But the thing aboutMissouri Botanical Garden is
they have a plant finder sectionof their website that's really
comprehensive, I don't thinkI've ever looked up a plant that
hasn't been on there. Andthey'll tell you how much water

(07:49):
plant wants, they'll tell youwhat soil preferences it has.
But by far the most importantpiece of information, the thing
that I always really appreciatethat they have on there is where
the plant grows in the wild.
Because if I have some ideawhere a plant grows naturally,
without people cultivating it,it's much easier for me to
figure out what sort ofconditions it wants in the
backyard.

(08:11):
Yeah, that's so true. Why don'tyou can you say an example?
Sure can from our own garden owngarden. So we have Rosemary back
there, I looked that up. And itsays that Rosemary is native to
Northern Africa, SouthernEurope, in Western Asia,
particularly dry rocky areas. Soour human wet rely on climate is

(08:31):
not that at all. But I can takemy rosemary, put it in a pot
with really good drainage, maybeadd a little sand to the potting
soil, put it on the concreteskirt on the south facing wall
of our house where it gets superhot in the summer. I know I
don't need to fertilize itbecause it's native rocky soil
isn't going to hold a lot ofnutrients. And make sure the
soil mostly dries out betweenwaterings. And I feel like

(08:52):
that's a pretty goodapproximation of where we
growing in nature.
Yeah, totally different fromwhere we grow. You know, ferns
in the backyard, like the backof our backyard where it's
really damp. And we're kind ofapproximating closer to a you
know, damp understory woodlandarea where you have more

(09:12):
rainfall and obviously a tonmore shade because ferns, love
moist, dark, bottom of theforest floor, really mature
trees,think about what's there. And
you think like, oh, the leavesare falling every year and a
deciduous forest. They createlike really rich soil with a ton
of organic matter. Lots ofnutrients. All right, so plant
tags. What's the last word onthose?

(09:34):
Yeah, when you're at the gardencenter, the plant tag is going
to get you going in the rightdirection. And if you want to
just take the leap from thereand stick it somewhere and see
how it does, you know that istotally cool. And we won't judge
you because the truth is, that'show we've done most of our
gardening and that's how youlearn. But sometimes if you want
to it's it's fun to dig a littledeeper and really think about

(09:55):
where the plants grow wild. Andthe last thing I'll say and
maybe we'll get into this Inanother episode, but if you're
looking at something likeMissouri botanical garden and
the entry for a plant, it willtell you when a flower blooms
and for how long which you alsoprobably want to think about
because if you want somethingthat just explodes in spring and

(10:15):
is really beautiful in earlyspring, you know, that's lovely.
On the other hand, if you expectthis, this plant that you're
buying to bloom from the middleof summer all the way through
frost, that's a totallydifferent experience in your
garden. So that timing is likeanother layer to dive into and
we'll save it for anotherepisode.

(10:40):
Now for a segment called wefucked that up. That's right,
bachelors button addition. Whatdo we fuck up?
Oh, man. So we got somebachelors button. It's a
beautiful wildflower has a supersaturated blue flowers is a
color that you don't see a lotin nature. A lot of plants that

(11:01):
are called Blue are actuallymore purple air quotes there.
Oh, I thought you were talkingto me like a cipher podcast.
Nope. Just commenting. justtelling the people what they
quote unquoteblue plants are really more
purple. But this is blue bluebachelors button is also called
corn flour. And if you thinkabout the Crayola pack of

(11:23):
crayons and cornflower blue,that is that bright, brilliant
blue that the flower is okay.
And now I feel like we have tosay the scientific name for
bachelors button becausewe do centaurea cyanus. Plant
tag said full sun,it said full sun. And we thought
well, we have this part of ourborder garden doesn't have
anything shading in and when Istand here in the morning, I see

(11:45):
the sun This is full sun,right? Yeah, what could what
could be unfill son about this.
Fuck that up.
Because this is a border garden.
It's bordering a fence, there'sa fence there. So if you plant
something right next to thefence, when you stand there, you
might not be in the shadestanding next to the fence. But
the ground is in the shade untilalmost noon and full sun to

(12:06):
define full what they mean whenthey say full sun. That's like
six plus hours of straightsunlight. parts on our part
shade would be four to six hoursof sun. Full shade is less than
four hours where we stuck thisas maybe two feet from an east
facing fence.

(12:30):
Right offensive runs northsouth. Yeah, yeah, you could
obviously put it against thesouth wall offense and it would
get six plus hours but a northsouth. Yeah, running fence.
Yeah, the result that we gotwith our bachelors button is
instead of getting nice uprightstems, what you picture when you
picture wild flowers with happyblooms sticking up at the top,

(12:51):
what we got was floppy stemsthat scrape along the ground.
And it's blooming but the bloomsare like sitting amidst the
leaves of the other plants. Andit's like sort of pretty, but it
looks like something's wrongwith it. And we're questioning
why is my bachelor's buttonfalling over what's wrong with

(13:12):
my bachelor's but and what Ilearned when I googled it is
yeah, bachelors button button isinfamous for flopping. If it
doesn't get tons and tons andtons of direct sun, this is a
wildflower that's meant to begrowing in the middle of a field
of wild flowers where you'regetting 12 hours, 1516 hours of

(13:32):
sun sunrise to sundown it'ssitting there in the sun. And if
it's getting a lot lot less thanthat it's just gonna lie on the
ground and it doesn't have asmuch energy to hold itself up,
right?
So what do you do to make surethat you're going to get as much
sun as you need on your plants,Rebecca,

(13:52):
mess it up over and over andover again and move your plants
around a lot. Usually,that sort of thing. I like that
approach. I think it's extremelyeffective. But it takes a lot of
patience and you kill some ofyour plants. I would say if you
want to be methodical about it,you can you can take some photos
different times a day, see wherethe light is actually hitting

(14:13):
the ground. You can use an applike sun surveyor to see where
it's like an augmented realityapps you see where the sun is
going to be at different timesof the day. And if you love sun
surveyor, I do love sunsurveyor.
You tell everyone you meet aboutsun survey, I
feel like the more I like it,dislike it. It's like we have to

(14:35):
meet in the middle. It has to bean even
sunspire is not yet sponsoringthis podcast, that's some
surveyor people. If you'relistening it was more or less
well it is very effectivebecause you can I will say the
biggest thing about some surveyand that is certainly not the
only app that does it there I'msure many other apps but you can
set the date and see if the sunis going to be behind your tree

(14:58):
or behind your fans or behind.
whatever other plantings youhave, so if it's January and you
want to look at like, what's itgoing to be like in June? What's
it going to be like in August,you can, you can plug in those
numbers and take a look. Butyour method of sort of like
seeing how stuff does and thenmoving things around, you get a
little more plant specific data.

(15:19):
So it's a little more like, youcan maybe maybe the bachelors
button doesn't do too wellthere. But I mean, I think
akinesia is a full sun plant. Wehave it planted in among the
bachelors but and and that'sdoing great. That's like
blooming and upgrade. Andyeah, this is so true. This is
why we end up you know, googlingones, like, particular type of

(15:39):
plant by the scientific name forhours, because like, does it
really want full sun? Or is sixhours or five hours enough?
every plant is a little bitdifferent. And your exact
location and the exactcircumstances that you're
putting that plan in is unique.

(16:01):
This is what I think is kind ofso fun about gardening, is
you're you're establishing amicroclimate where you have this
specific type of shade,depending on how many buildings
how much wind is protected asyour garden protected from by as
the building next you wait. Soyes, the plant is in shade, but

(16:22):
it's getting a ton of reflectedlight, like that will affect its
growth. Yep. I think that's it.
Anything else to say about planttags, pastures button? I think
we did itjust that if you go to Lowe's or
Home Depot, the plant tags suck,and they'll basically lie to
you. And you need to Google whatthat plant actually wants.
Because I have been led astrayso many times. Yeah, those plant
tags are going to be like, it'sfine.

(16:49):
Don't listen, don't listen tothat.
This isn't spawn con, this isjust like don't go to Home
Depot. And Lowe's is like antianti spawn con. I think the best
thing that we've ever done asgardeners is find nurseries that
are nurseries and not part of ahardware store and go, you know,
maybe you go at an off time oryou just develop a relationship

(17:11):
where you can actually asksomebody who knows about plants
like, Hey, this is what mybackyard is like, I want to buy
this plan, Will it work? Or isthere a different one that's
better, whatever. And I think ifyou go to an independent
nursery, you find people whoreally are interested in talking
to you about those questions.
And I feel like we've learned somuch that way. Oh, my gosh,
shout out. Pat comes in littleCompton.

(17:33):
That's right. Yeah. If you wantany recommendations of wonderful
Rhode Island based nurseries,you just send us a DM on
Instagram and we will tell youwhere to go because we have the
dirt. Like we did it. I thinkwe'll leave it there. See you
next time.

(17:58):
We hope you've enjoyed leafingout and if you ever have a
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