1

People give names to plants, but where do the names come from? What do

plant names say about plants? And what do plant names say about us?

Common plant names in the English language help align these extremely

variable organisms with our own habits, interests and needs. For example,

some common names for plants offer practical advice. Breadfruit is food, and

razor grass can draw blood. Other names describe plant characteristics:

trilliums have parts in threes and milkweeds have opaque white sap. In

Spanish the the same plants may have quite different common names, but I

think you probably get my point. Common names often tell us how to use a

plant, or point out some obvious characteristic of the plant so that we can

identify it.

Some common names reflect history. Jimson weed is named for Jamestown,

Virginia, where English settlers first learned about this plant. The

encounter, which took place in the 17th century, was not a happy one.

Local Indians, no doubt alarmed by the gang of adventurers and thieves who

had arrived from who-knows-where, fed them the plant, which causes violent

hallucinations. The Indians believed that the plant summoned divine forces,

but the English were neither enlightened nor driven away. Perhaps as a way

of dismissing the plantπs powers, they called it a weed.

For a sacred plant the name jimson weed is inappropriate, but at least

it directs attention to a moment in time and a clash of cultures. That is

more than we can say for the overwhelming majority of plant names, which

tell us nothing at all. Zinnias, for example, are named for Johann Gottfried

Zinn,

an 18th century professor of botany in Gottingen. The most that we can infer

from this name is that Europeans were acquainted with the plant until after

the age of colonization began.

2

Common names are notoriously confusing. Most countries and localities have

their own common names for plants. Not only can one name refer to more than

one kind of plant, but the same plant can have many different names.

Among the common names in English for Viola tricolor are heartsease,

love-lies-bleeding, love-in-idleness, johnny-jump-up, kit-run-about, wild

pansy, stepmother, and birdπs eye. No doubt there are plants that have

equivalent numbers of names in Spanish.

By the early 18th century unfamiliar plants from around the world were

flooding into Europe, and nomenclature and classification

had become what one professor of botany called the Augean stable of botany.

In response to this, Linnaeus developed the binomial system.

It was brilliantly simple. It gave each plant a genus and a species name in

Latin. To determine what constituted a species or a genus, Linnaeus directed

attention away from superficial plant characteristics, such as the colors of

flowers, to what he reasoned were most constant and signficant about

flowers: the structures of their reproductive organs.

Some found this scandalous. The St. Petersburg academician Johann

Siegesbeck denounced the Linnanean system for its ≥loathsome harlotry≤, and

asked ≥Who would have thought that bluebells, lilies and onions could be up

to such immorality?≤ What was offensive to Siegesbeck was not only that

Linnaeus seemed obcessed with sex, but that if flowers were indeed sexual

organs, then the flowering world was a panorama of promiscuity, where sins

such as incest and self-fertilization prevailed. As Siegesbeck saw it,

the binomial system validated licentiousness.

Linnaeus chose not to respond directly to these attacks, but named a

small, unattractive weed Sigesbeckia orientalis. The high road, however, had

its price. Linnaeus, who had been trained as a medical doctor, planned to

build a practice in Stockholm, but because of the damage done to his

reputation by Siegesbeck, no patients came to him.

Ironically, licentiousness, although not his own, saved Linnaeus from

disaster. In Stockholmπs taverns he encountered men who were suffering from

gonorrhea. He successfully treated a few of them, and word quickly spread.

Within a year he had so many patients that he complained he had no time for

his family or friends. His practice eventually came to the attention of the

court, and the King of Sweden appointed him professor of medicine and botany

at Uppsala University. Linnaeus remained in Uppsala for the rest of his

life.

The binomial system is something of a misnomer. It does not give each

plant two names, but a minimum of six. These correspond to the plantπs

division, class, order, family, genus and species. Thus the weed named for

Siegesbeck is Plantae Angiospermae Dicotyledoneae Compositae Sigesbeckia

orientalis. This sounds like the name of a king or grand duchess, but is

elegantly spare nevertheless, considering that it aligns the plant with all

other living things.

3

A great many plant binomials memorialize people, especially botanists,

their patrons, friends, and family members. The shift from descriptive names

to naming plants for people was no doubt favored by the sheer number of

unfamiliar plants that came to the attention of European botanists following

the first voyages of discovery. After the fiftieth lutea and the hundredth

hirsuta, the appeal and usefulness of many Latinate descriptive words must

have worn thin.

The shift also reflected the rise of humanism. Humanism tended to

construe the world as a treasury of resources to serve human needs and

desires. Plant names could further this grand project. For example, the most

conspicuous organism in the part of the world where I live is a magnificent

tree called Douglas fir. It is named for David Douglas, a Scottish plant

explorer who reached the American Pacific Northwest in the 1820s. He helped

make the tree known to European gardeners.

The treeπs binomial is Pseudotsuga menziesii and honors a different man,

Archibald Menzies, a Scottish doctor who identified the tree in 1791. Today,

whenever the treeπs name is spoken or written one or the other man is

evoked.

Such names celebrate not only individuals, but the values they represent. In

the case of Douglas Fir the values are science, European horticulture, and

humanism.

4

In China the belief that human beings are separate from animals and

plants and superior to them never took root. Perhaps as a consequence the

Chinese rarely named plants for people. Most plants had descriptive names,

or were named for other plants, or occasionally for animals or human

artifacts. For example, Amaranthus tricolor

is OYanlaihong,π which means ≥red at the time when the wild geese arrive.≤

Roses are OWoody Perfumed Flowers.π And the gardenia, which in English

memorializes Dr. Alexander Garden, a friend of Linnaeus, the Chinese call

OWine Cup.π

The only plants named for people were a few selections of ornamentals

that memorialize families rather than individuals. There is a peony named

OYao Huang,π which means Yao Family yellow. But more typical for peonies are

names like OTwo Beauties,π and OPhoenix White.π

5

Anthropocentrism, which is the belief that human beings are the central

fact or aim of the universe, is largely a Western phenomenon, traceable back

to the Bible and before that to Mesopotamia. In Genesis God creates human

beings in His image, separate from the beasts, who exist only in their own,

earthbound, lesser images. The message is clear: we are like God, they are

not.

Genesis reinforces this message through its account of how plants and

animals received their names. God brings every living creature before Adam

so that he can name them. After completing the job, Adam falls asleep, and

while he is unconscious, God removes one of his ribs and fashions it

into a helpmeet. When Adam awakens from this nonelective surgery, there she

is, and he names her Woman.

The parallels between Adamπs naming of the creatures and the original

creation of the universe are striking. According to Genesis, both activities

are masculine. Both involve words, and they arise out of incorporeal

reality:

God brings being out of nothingness by speaking, Adam brings names out of

his mind or soul. And both activities are exhausting: after the sixth day

God rests, and after naming the creatures, Adam sleeps.

In the Biblical scheme of things naming manifests power and establishes

heirarchies. Man gives names, but other organisms do not, which reflects the

chasm between man and all other creatures. There is a secondary division

between male and female. Adam names Eve. Presumably she is enough like him

to be capable of making up her own names. However, by the time God brings

her into being language is complete.

6

Names that assert human superiority in the grand scheme of things

are of course little more than expressions of wishful thinking. Wishful

thinking is very human, and can be funny or sad or tragic. In Europe during

the Middle Ages many people believed that God cared so much for them that He

endowed every plant with a sign which, if properly understood, indicated a

use. For example, plants with yellow flowers or roots were likely to cure

jaundice. The complex colors of iris petals were Godπs way of hinting

that they could serve as poltices for bruises. Poplar trees, whose leaves

tremble in the slightest breeze, would alleviate palsy.

In the 16th century this faith in the role that human need played in the

design of nature was elaborated into the Doctrine of Signatures, which

became a basis of pharmacology. Many plant names that we still use in

English

can be traced back to the Doctrine of Signatures. Thus adderπs tongue was an

antidote for snake bites, and toothwort, which has molar-shaped leaves,

treated toothache.

No doubt some of these plants had placebo effects, the power of which we

should not underestimate. However, placebo effects are unreliable, and we

know today that heartsease is a name that represents a failed experiment in

healing. We no longer expect hepaticas (from the Latin hepaticus, or liver)

to cure diseases of the liver, or scabiosa to help form scabs, or leopardπs

bane to repel leopards, but the names persist and have gradually ceased

to serve the anthropocentric gaze. If anything, they remind us of our

vulnerability to self-serving explanations. The plants that were named

according to the Doctrine of Signatures today accumulate associations

specific to the plants themselves. Time, they say, is the greatest artist.

It overcomes even the most treasured false beliefs.

7

The ancient Egyptians called cats maus. The Nauhatl-speaking Mexicans

call turkeys huacalotes, which is more-or-less the sound that these birds

make. We sometimes incorporate approximations of the sounds that animals

make into our languages as if we were adopting names that the animals had

given to themselves.

With plants no such pretense is possible. They are as devoid of language

as the sky, and consequently their names encourage flights of imagination.

Dianthus is the flower of Zeus from the Greek words di, or Zeus, and anthos,

which is flower. How the dianthus came to be associated with Zeus

has been forgotten. However the plant grows in Crete, which according to

myth is the birthplace of Zeus.

Only a few plant names have been in use for so long that their original

meanings are lost. Some authorities believe that the root word for rose may

be the Aryan word vrod, which meant something like ≥growth.≥ Others argue

that the root word could have been the Celtic rodd or rhudd, meaning red.

In any case, a rose was not originally a rose. It took a very long time for

the word to stand irreducibly for a certain kind of plant.

8

Irises are named for the Greek goddess of the rainbow. Iris delivered

messages from the gods to mortals, but she never carried messages from

mortals back to the gods. She ran a one-way communication service,

much like television, or movies.

Inspiration is one-way. Duchamp once said that no artist paints more

than seven pictures. I take this to mean that no artist can expect to

receive messages from the gods more than seven times. We can quibble about

the gods, of course, they may be electrochemical events, but what is

important is that the messages do not originate in what is identifiably the

self. The hallmark of inspiration is that it comes from somewhere else. As a

result, the practice of art tends to be humbling. Artists can be arrogant

toward other people, but they cannot be arrogant about inspiration, because

no artist has control over it. The name iris recalls the power of the gods,

who do not necessarily take human form, or even the forms of living

creatures. Iris reminds us that there are alternatives to the human will to

power.

9

Plant domestication began at least 12,000 years ago. During most of the

time since then people have selected plants without knowing anything about

genetics or even about plant sexuality. Although many species were

domesticated, and extremely refined ornamentals came into being,

such as most of the flowers painted by the 17th century Dutch, or the

astonishing azaleas pictured in the Pillow Book, a Japanese guide to

cultivated azaleas published in 1692, no one knew where these flowers came

from. As late as the 17th century when plants appeared with new colors,

patterns, or forms, the change was thought to have been brought about

from conjunctions of the planets, or directly from God.

Poets came closer to guessing the force that favored new hybrids. In

1681 Andrew Marvell wrote

≥Luxurious man, to bring his vice in use

Did after him the world seduce

And from the fields the flowers and plants allure,

Where Nature was most plain and pure.≤

Except for the heavy-handed moralism, this is a more-or-less accurate

description of the co-evolutionary process involved in the domestication of

ornamental plants. We domesticate ornamental plants to mirror our dreams,

values, habits, and aesthetic preferences. And vices too. That is, our

dreams, values, vices, and aesthetic preferences have evolutionary

consequences for flowers. And of course for animals as well.

10

In 1694 Rudolph Jakob Camerarius published Letter on the Sexuality of

Plants in which he identified the pistil as the female organ of flowers,

the stamen as the male organ, and pollen as the fertilizing agent. This

discovery made plant breeding in the modern sense possible.

The first ornamental plant breeders were artisans who in their spare

time

hybridized ornamental plants. In England these amateur breeders, called

florists, met in pubs, where they drank, held competitive exhibitions of

hybrids, and exchanged horticultural information. The artisan-florists only

bred plants that met exacting criteria: the plants had to be showy, highly

variable, and perennial, and they had to reproduce both sexually and

vegetatively. Sexual reproduction was necessary to produce new varieties,

but vegetative reproduction was also necessary, so that new varieties could

be propagated without further change.

Only a few kinds of plants in cultivation at the time met all of these

requirements. Carnations, pinks, tulips, hyacinths, primroses, ranunculuses,

and auriculas were popular among breeders in the 18th century. In the 19th

century others were added to the list, including violas, dahlias, geraniums,

camellias, roses, irises, and sweet peas. Today roughly a thousand breeding

complexes of ornamental plants evolve with human guidance.

From the beginning, plant breeders gave their creations names.

Auricula names from 1785 include OPopplewellπs Conquerer,π OGortonπs

Champion,π and OWrigleyπs Northern Hero.π A little later we get OTaylorπs

Gloryπ and OJolly Tar.π These names celebrate sports, victory,and the navy.

Throughout most of the 19th century ornamental plant breeding continued

to be associated with artisans. In class-conscious England they were

considered too ignorant and vulgar to produce serious art. Ruskin, perhaps

the most important art commentator and arbiter of English taste of the

Victorian era, fulminated against ornamental plant breeding, which he

considered depraved. For him the problems went deeper than class

and promiscuous sexuality: plant breeders twisted plants into something

other than their true forms, violating their natures. It took the the fin de

siecle decadents to make a virtue of impurity, and bring a degree of

aesthetic respectability to plant breeding.

However, groundwork for another kind of respectability had already been

laid. In the middle of the 19th century a few clergymen began to try their

hands at plant breeding. Under them auriculas with names like OAdonis,π and

OCiceroπ appear. These names presuppose acquaintance with the classics. In

the second half of the 19th century auricula names increasingly announce

formal education and imply the social circumstances that favor it. By the

end of the century we have auriculas named for royals such as OQueen

Alexandra.π

Auricula breeding had become middle class.

11

Nineteenth-century iris names follow the same path. The first

experiments in iris breeding took place in Germany and France in the early

19th century.

Iris breeding arrived in England during the second half of the nineteenth

century, by which time ornamental plant breeding was already on the road to

respectability. Consequently from the start iris names in England reflect

middle-class values and concerns : ONeptune,π and OPrincess Beatriceπ are

representative.OKashmir Whiteπ and OAmasπ, for Amasra in Asia Minor, are

named for places in the East where bearded iris species originated, but also

reflect late Victorian fascination with the Orient.

Iris breeding came to the United States shortly after it began in

England, and flourished during the first decades of the 20th century.

American iris names from this period reflect a set of values and

expectations

very similar to those of middle-class English breeders, but with less

emphasis on aristocratic titles. ONew Albionπ and OLent A. Williamsonπ are

typical American names from before World War I.

12

The 1920s mark a watershed in iris names. The prewar practice continues

of giving iris hybrids names such as OQuaker Ladyπ - names that evoke

traditional values - but the name OMelodramaπ is the harbinger of the

future.

As consumer culture moves into its mature phase entertainment moves toward

the center of consciousness. Over the next few decades iris names

increasingly announce the commodification of life, and its chief imperative:

fun.

In the US contemporary irises have been named for so many different kinds

of fun that we need a taxonomy just for it. Leafing through iris books and

catalogs, Iπve found nine major categories of fun: daydreams, travel,

popular entertainments, food and drink, beautiful women, love, illicit sex,

social status, and ruffles. Letπs take a quick look at some of these.

For Americans, tourist destinations and travel fantasies are reflected

in iris names like OGala Madrid,π OFly to Vegas,π and OTahiti Surprise.π

Islands are very popular, and Hawaii the most popular of all. We can buy

clones of OHawaiian Holiday,π OHawaiian Moonlight,π and OHilo Shore.π Such

names have nothing to do with irises, which do not grow well in the tropics.

Iris names celebrate almost every kind of popular entertainment. There

are television irises such as ODesigning Womenπ and OLawrence Welkπ, and

circus irises like OP.T. Barnum.π Visual arts irises include OGraphic Artπ

and OBeaux Art.π Among comic book irises are OSupermanπ and OMighty Mouse.π

There is a ORingoπ iris and a ORock Starπ iris, along with OSantana.π

But theater and movies lead the way. One can grow a garden full of stage and

screen irises including OBroadway,π and OOff Broadway,π OShow Biz,O and

OActress,π ODress Rehearsal,π OTinsel Town,π and OPink Starlet.π

Another inspiration for iris names is food and drink - or rather,

desserts and soft drinks. OBanana Creamπ and OGingersnap,π might share a

border with OOrange Crush,π ORaspberry Ripples,π and OLime Smoothy.π If one

prefers alcohol, there is OMulled Wineπ and OLilac Champagne.π What all

these have in common is calories. OSugartimeπ sums it up. We have a genetic

susceptibility to sweet things. We were evolved on the savannah, where sugar

was always in short supply, and so we never needed need to say no, until

now.

Capitalism, which moved onto the world stage with trade in sugar and

tobacco, exploits our genetic weaknesses. We are the animal who plays tricks

on itself. Consumer culture is the trickster spirit incarnate. Iris, too,

exploit us. They have evolved forms that seduce us into caring for them, and

giving them new homes. However, no iris is named OOpium Trade.π

Contemporary iris names show that women are as popular as desserts. By

internet one can order ODream Girl,π OMiss California,π and OHomecoming

Queen,π along with OPlay Girlπ and OFemme Fatale.π Love is consumer-friendly

with OCupidπs Arrowπ and OChapel Bells.π Add OLingering Loveπ to the

shopping cart, along with OSpanish Affair.π And how about OStreet Walkerπ or

OSatin Satan?π

Homosexuality is probably implicit in some iris names. In the United

States gays are to ornamental horticulture as blacks are to basketball, but

plant breeding is unfavorable to coming out. Plant breeding requires land,

which is much less expensive in the country than in the city, so plant

breeding is easiest to do in the country. Rural Americans tend to be

intolerant of overt homosexuality, so country homosexuals have to be

discreet. Perhaps this accounts for how few direct references there are to

homosexuality in iris names, although there is a ORuPaulπ named for one of

Americaπs most famous transvestites.

Unlike rural homosexuals, those under the spell of social status do not

need to be discreet. They announce themselves in iris names such as OSocial

Register,π OGold Cadillac, and OStately Mansionsπ. Contemporary America is

sharply divided by class, and with the ascendency of Ronald Reagan and the

Bush dynasty the hereditary economic elite has enjoyed sufficient public

approval that occasional iris names such as OHis Lordshipπ indicate

nostalgia for feudalism. But plutocracy is more American than feudalism, so

more irises still have names like OMillionaireπ and OBillionaire.π

The only category of fun that has anything actually to do with irises

is ruffles. Ruffles are irregularities that distort the petals of many

highly bred plants, giving them an appearance like crushed candy wrappers.

Few wild irises have these irregularities. With rare exceptions they come

from breeding, but not from just any kind of breeding, only from careful and

sustained selection. Even as late as the 1940s, by which time bearded irises

had been selected for 3,000 years and intensely bred for a century,

relatively few highly bred irises were ruffled. Today, however, almost all

new tall bearded iris introductions are heavily ruffled. Some have so-called

≥lace≤ as well, minute irregularities along the petal margins that give

flowers a crimped or frayed look. For just a few dollars one can grow

OBubbling Lace,π OFloradora Flounce,π and OPorcelain Frills.π

Ruffles are found not only in highly bred irises, but in highly bred

pansies, daylilies, cattleyas, petunias, and many other kinds of flowers.

All have been bred to look somewhat alike. Ruffles amount to generic

prettiness,

genetic kisch. They are crafted in the spirit of the global shopping mall.

Here everything is for sale and everything is disposable, including life.

This is nihilism with a happy face, or maybe itπs just fashion. But unlike

hairdos or popular music, genetic styles tend to last for decades.

13

Artists are latecomers to naming life. Edward Steichen, who was the

first recognized artist to claim plant breeding as a fine art, probably did

not name any of his hybrids until the 1920s.

He believed that plant breeding was akin to poetry, and named delphinium

hybrids for poets. Among Steichenπs hybrids are OCarl Sandburg,π OWilliam

Carlos Williamsπ, OArchibald MacLeishπ, and OPaul Claudel.π Today only one

of Steichenπs hybrids is still commercially available, the sky blue

delphinium OConnecticut Yankee,π named for Mark Twainπs novel A Connecticut

Yankee in King Arthurπs Court.

By naming delphiniums for poets, Steichen affirmed the seriousness of

ornamental plant breeding. The cultural context in which Steichen exhibited

delphiniums at the Museum of Modern Art in 1936 was a struggle within the

American art world to define modern art. There was no consensus about

whether fine art included such things as mass-produced laboratory glassware,

household furnishings, or office equipment, much less hybrid delphiniums.

However, there was general agreement that certain forces were

antithetical to art. The critic Paul Rosenfeld spoke for many in the 1930s

when he stated that ≥The main enemy of art [is] modern mercantile

advertisement.≤

Today that assumption no longer holds. Art, like the rest of cultural

life, has had to accommodate itself to advertising and to market forces that

reach almost everywhere. As a consequence, the old lines between art and

entertainment, art and fashion have blurred. But not entirely: art has a

long memory, and many cunning strategies, as well as its own trajectory and

inertia, affected by, but separate from the marketplace. For example, the

poet Joseph Brodsky said that he created for the past. I interpret this to

mean that he created for the approval of spiritual ancestors. These

ancestors deliver blessings and curses that awaken us from the present.

14

Since the 1930s artists have been exhibiting live works, and for roughly

the last fifteen years artists have been giving names to living things.

Sometimes, as in the case of Heath Buntingπs Superweed naming seems to

happen almost inadvertently, because live works need titles just as works

made from nonliving materials need titles. But sometimes naming is separate

from titling. The best known instance is Eduardo Kacπs fluorescing rabbit,

which he named Alba. But the project of which Alba is a part is titled GFP

Bunny.

15

In the fall of 1992 I did an installation titled Mirror for Marylhurst

College in Oregon. Mirror consisted of 18 named daffodil hybrids purchased

from mail-order catalogs. I planted the daffodils in a bed along a sidewalk

that led to the Collegeπs art gallery, and I labelled each daffodil with a

new name. For example, OErlicheer,π a fluffy double white narcissus,

became OMashed Potatoesπ because thatπs what the flowers look like to me.

OKing Alfred,π which is still the most popular daffodil in the world more

than a century after it was first bred, became OGenetic Folkart.π And so on

with names like OPatent Number 3252A,π OFun Life,π OMalice,π and ONeurotic

Rose.π I wanted to re-introduce an element of darkness into plant names,

something lost during the twentieth century. Plant names today are too

uniformly light, too fun. As Paul Klee said, art without darkness is like

mathematics without odd numbers.

16

Artists can title works however they want, but in the United States for

a plant name to be accepted among horticulturists, the hybridizer must make

formal application to the appropriate national plant society. The society

then either accepts or rejects the name. Rejection occurs when the proposed

name is already in use for another plant of the same type, or when a hybrid

too closely resembles an existing named plant. For example, last summer I

proposed to name an iris for my wife, but the name OKateπ

had already been taken.

The registry system has a three word maximum for any name, but under

rare circumstances will allow one additional word. This made it possible for

me to name an iris for a friend with four names, ORainer von der

Schulenburg.π

However, a five-word plant name would be out of the question. Under the

registry system we will never have a flower named The Bride Stripped Bare By

Her Bachelors, Even.

17

I have followed Steichenπs example and named plants for poets, including

OJohn Witteπ and OAllen Grossman.π I have also named plants for artists. I

named a streptocarpus OEdward Steichen,π and another OMark Tobey.π Irises

include ORobert Smithson,π OEduardo Kac,π and OOlaf Stapledon.π Stapledonπs

1930 novel, Last and First Men envisions civilizations based upon genetics,

with genetic art the highest form of expression.

Last year I named an iris OSnowy Donkey,π after the great Chinese

artist Chu Ta. He was born in 1626, a descendent of the first Ming emperor.

Because of his ancestry, he faced execution when the Manchus seized control

of China in 1644. He fled his native city and took refuge in a Buddhist

monestary. He was a monk for more than 30 years, rising to the position of

abbot. However, eventually he quit the monestary and married. His marriage

apparently failed,

and he seems to have had no children. He devoted the rest of his life to

painting. He used many pseudonyms, Snowy Donkey among them, and feigned

madness or perhaps actually was mad - art historians donπt agree. But his

spare art fulfils the Chinese ideals of being eccentric, ever-changing, and

antique.

My streptocarpuses include OLaurie Andersonπ and ORuth Currier.π When my

wife and I lived in New York Ruth had the apartment below us. She danced

with Jose Limonπs troupe, and for awhile directed it. As an artist she was

always a model of integrity. We built a roof garden together which became so

lush that the roof partially collapsed during a rainstorm.

When one names a plant for a living person, that person must give

written permission. I would like to name an iris for Margaret Atwood, whose

Oryx and Crake is in my opinion the best novel about biotechnology ever

written. But she never answered my emails, so the iris that I chose for her

does not have her name.

18

Most of my plant names are like Douglas Fir: they memorialize

individuals

and the values associated with them, but say little about the plants

themselves. I feel conflicted about this. Certainly plants deserve their own

names.

But what are their real names? Plants are perfect examples of

nonrepresentational art. They represent nothing except themselves. In

nonrepresentational art there is a tradition of not titling works.

Kandinsky, and especially Mondrian

pioneered this tradition with nontitles like Composition III. In the 1950s,

60s, and 70s there were entire exhibits of works without titles, or with

deliberately uninformative titles such as Number 99, or Four Reds. No doubt

genetic artists have much to learn from these experiments in titling.

Without a title viewers have no recourse but to look at the work itself.

I eventually named the Margaret Atwood iris OUntitled.π However, I

suspect that with plants we will tend to favor more distinctive names.

Living things, whether or not we claim them as art, are family, and every

member of the family must have its own, unique name.

19

Some things about the future are fairly certain. We know, for example,

that we will either develop a sustainable culture, or suffer the

consequences, like any creature that damages or exhausts its environment.

Names will play a role in either future because names affect how we see the

plants and animals that we are dependent on. In the years to come, we may

need to rename many creatures.

Artists have come to naming life so recently that we can only guess

what they will bring to plant and animal names. Unlike all other disciplines

the arts can tap into everything that we know and are and can imagine. The

wide embrace of the arts gives us our best chance of realizing one promise

of language, which is to bridge the gap between our minds and the larger

world.