Best of all it is used globally so the confusion created by local names or foreign languages is no longer a problem.

Botanical plant names can look off-putting and complicated, but they're actually quite simple once you get the hang of them. Primping and pruning the secret garden might seem like a totally 21st century concept, but the fact is women have gotten into below-the-belt grooming since before the Bronze Age.

Roses, strawberries, apples, and hawthorn are members of the Rosaceae family and tomatoes, potatoes, chillies and deadly nightshade all belong to the Solanaceae family. John Parkinson, “The Situation of a Garden of Pleasure, with the Nature of Soyles, and How to Amend the Defects that are in Many Sorts of Situations and Grounds”, in Paradisi in Sole Paradisus Terrestris. Michaelmas daisies, globe artichokes and sunflowers, for example, are members of the Asteraceae family. Fascinating feature spreads retell the adventures of important plant hunters such as Sir Joseph Banks and Alexander von Humboldt, and explain how their discoveries affect the way our gardens look today. Combining the two names gives us a unique term for this person’s individual name just as combing the “genus” and “species” scientific Latin plant names gives us a unique botanical nomenclature guide for each individual plant.

So, when confronted with the name Acer rubrum ( red maple), the gardener will know he/she is looking at a maple with vibrant, red, fall leaves.

To accurately distinguish between them, each is assigned a unique name - often referred to as the Latin name, the scientific name or the botanical name.