How did Rose Geranium get it's Botanical name and Why? Who Invented Botanical Names?

When a new plant is identified the scientist who discovers it will spend a long time debating with other scientists about which genus it is in, but he gets to choose the species name. Species which have been known for a very very long time were given their latin names by Linnaeus and other founders of the binomial naming system.





The latin name of the rose geranium is Pelargonium graveolens. It is not technically a Geranium, which is a different genus, but Pelargonia are generally called Geranium by gardeners, as that is the category which scientists used to put them in. Graveolens is latin for 'heavy-smelling' apparently!





If you look any living organism up in Wikipedia it will often tell you who named it. The person's surname will appear in the box in the top right hand corner, next to the species name, in little black letters. P. graveolens isn't recorded there but Pelargonium genus was named by Charles Louis L'Héritier de Brutelle.

How did Rose Geranium get it's Botanical name and Why? Who Invented Botanical Names?
I agree with Curious Orange that you can tell who named any given species by looking for the name or abbreviation of the name at the end of each Latin name, but I might add that Linnaeus is generally given credit for our current system of botanical names, in 1753 (though others contributed ideas). He named so many plants, and is so well-known, that you will often simply see an L. at the end of a botanical name.


(Not all sources include the author, as the person is known, when they give a botanical name.)

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