Your Own Names for Plants

Have you ever given your own names to plants because you didn't know the real name and then that name stuck even after you learned the real name? I've got things stuck with the strange names I've given them, like

Pittsburgh cactus
Pennsylvania cactus
John's mom plant
African thing
Rocketdyne agave
Farralone agave
Air Force plant
Raytheon aloe
Roger and Karen agave
Darlene plant
1860s house ice plant
El Paso iris

Even though I know the names of these plants, I usually refer to them with "people" names (based on their cultivars). When I tell my DH that 'Anna' has to be pruned, he says, "Anna WHO?" LOL.

I have:

Anna the apple tree (low-chill variety 'Anna')
Dorie (another low-chill apple, 'Dorsett')
Tillie the Tulip Tree
Queenie (Queen Elizabeth rose)
Phil (the Louis Phillipe heirloom rose)

and so forth and so on :D

Well if Im talking to family then everything is named "mine"

I do have some
carmen hosta
school tick weed
and Uncles Joe's money plant

I only have "Benjamin"... ficus benjaminus. Used to have "Harry" (contorted filbert aka Harry Lauder's Walking Stick) but then I moved.

Someone gave me a little piece of a plant and I have yet to identify it, but then I haven't really tried. I just call it the "tick" plant since it has small tick like pieces all over the edges of the leaves. They fall off and root very easily. It must be some kind of succulent, but when I give a piece to anyone they say the name fits. Jenny

I have a lilac bush which we've had for five years now. When I planted it I named her Gusty, short for my mothers name which was Augusta. My mothers favorite plants were lilacs and ramblin roses. After five years my husband CANNOT remember the word" lilac" and always refers to the bush as "that purple smelly thing". LOL He spends alot of time sniffing it though, so he definitely likes it.

We are planting trees in honor of people we have known and loved who have gone to God. Each tree has ended up with the person's name. Now we have a new tree that was dug out of friends yard so it is named after those friends.

I also have plants given to me by DG members that are named their DG names. :)

sh105, that sounds like Mother of Thousands http://plantsdatabase.com/go/594/index.html or http://plantsdatabase.com/go/595/index.html

We have The Borg Plant, because it seems to want to take over... resistance is futile but we fight anyway.

Thank you KillerC. That is the plant! Thanks so much for the ID. Jenny

I have a coral vine, which we call Rosa. The plant's common name (around here) is Rose of Montana, but my Mom always called it Rosa Montana - now it's just Rosa.

Cheri'

I have Dave the Rabbit's foot fern. Davallia Feejeensis, but that is a mouthful. cuttings are Dave, Jrs.
When my daughter Sally was a little girl, we found a variety of annual salvia called 'Red Hot Sally'. after those, whenever we planted salvias they became "Sallies", purple hot sally white hot sally, etc. whatever color was in the color scheme for that year.
I have a hosta 'Elvis Lives' because that has always been my husband's screen name.
There is Auntie Anne's Jade plant, which used to belong to her but has been mine for many years and I am getting a daylily named 'Matt' for my son who is building me stone garden terraces.
Sally always called my forget-me-nots "don't forgets" too.

Oh my I do this all the time. I might or might not know the names but I tend to call them from who I got them from. I have Cheles mum, and others. lol Susie's daylilies , GRC's iris ,and the list goes on. Just makes it more personal for me. I like knowing my garden came from all my friends.

I do it too. I have a eucalyptus sedum(sedum sieboldiana), and a brug I call Audrey II(like from Little Shop of Horrors) 'cause it got so huge it was almost scary. (It was my first one) And I name my iris after people as most are the old fashioned kind that probably aren't hybrids anymore. I confess to being a sucker for finding out what something is. I love a good mystery.

naturepatch

LOL...I do this too.

Let me see if I can remember a few:

Becky Slater's Dianthus
Raintree from the gourd man
Jumanji bush ( a killer weed with thorns that will make you cry )
Our Love Bush ( one of the first plants we bought as a couple - a Spiraea )
The "Remember when I bought that for 50 cents at a clearance sale?" rose
That stuff from the woods the goats ate

LOL...

My old housemate had a jade plant named, of course, "Mr. Jade." It produced numerous cuttings over the years, each of which we fondly refer to as "Son of Jade." I also have Phil the Philodendron (not very original, but DH always goes "WHO?" when I mention I have to water Phil).

I have fried egg plants. When I was little and had a tree house, I would 'cook' meals and my Grandmother taught me how to make fried eggs.

I gave a friend 2 young trees. She named them Nolon and Marian, after me and my DH. One died, ( I don't remember which), so I don't think that was such a good idea......:-(
I do call some of my plants by the name of the one who gave them to me, like: " That's one of my Imogene Irises".

I HAVE A WANDERING JEW NAMED MOSES

Oh, that's good, zonesix. :)

Only a few get special names - and they're usually named for the person who gave it to me or, like "Phil," their names are just nicknames from their real names.

When I was in college, however, I had an Areca Palm that was a pretty big fella so he was "Junior." We cohabitated for years and years... I'd mention him in conversations - how he was waiting for me back at home and such - when attentive college boys didn't suit my fancy. That was years ago, though. I'm a widow now.

But then I was in Home Depot or some such place a few months ago and saw-one-had-to-have-one. So now I tell my husband that I'm going to go spend time with Junior while he watches basketball. "Spending time with Junior" doesn't seem to make DH jealous, though. He's figured out that it just means I'm going to garden in the courtyard.

We have the Hoen tree which was a gift from the Hoen family, Dad's tree is the blue blue spruce that we got for a Christmas tree our first year in this new home since Dad is gone now and he adored the really blue spruce trees. I have Mom's Rhubarb that is distinguished from all the others due to its name since it came from Mom's yard. The Kerma Peach is named after our friend Kerma who owned the mother tree that we had grafted to root stock. Tom Oak is our huge oak in the front yard that is named after the man that planted it in 1974 from an acorn.

I think that is about it for our plants named after folk we know.

Lani

My favorite rose is Maggie, I call her Maggiemoo (hence, my DG name).

Then I bought another, and she became Maggietoo.

I also have a plant that will forever be "shooting star something."

Silverfluter and her DH call nandinas "damdinas" because they want to take over everything and are next to impossible to remove.

drdon has some good names for some of his dahlias, I'll steer him over here.

This is Big Arse White.....or BAW as it's known in the Dahlia forum. The blooms are easily 15" across.

This is BAY.....yes it also gets quite large. Just for kicks last summer I weighed a particularly large flower on this one and it came up 19.7oz, I should catch fish that big...lol.

That big fella in the middle is Bob.....Echinopsis terscheckii, say hello to the folks Bob.

This is Pedro, the Saguaro......he doesn't speak English, but he has all of his papers....lol.

hope all are well,
don

Drdon
..................LOL...........................
Kaleem

Oh yes, one of my sisters named her sycamore tree Sidney when he was first planted. He turned out to be a cottonwood tree, but Sidney he remains.
:-)