Plant labels

It is characteristic of a botanic garden that all the plants are labelled. They give information about the plant’s name, place of origin and age.

What's on the label?

1. Plant family

The family name always ends in –aceae.

The scientific name of the species

The name consists of two parts:
2. the generic name
3. the specific name
The first is written with an initial capital, the second is not.

Cultivated plants can also have variety names. These are written with an initial capital inside single quotes, for example ’Snow White’.

4. Swedish name

Only about 2% of all flowering plants have Swedish names. For Swedish names we use the ones recommended by Svensk Kulturväxtdatabas.

5. Distribution

The area where the species grows wild.

6. Accession number

The first four digits tell which year the plant was planted. If we do not know how old it is we write 0000.