An adverb qualifies a verb, adjective, participle, or sometimes another adverb, e.g. narrowly, never, transversely. It can give a more accurate or refined meaning to such a word when placed next to it, e.g. ‘grows commonly’, ‘narrowed abruptly’, ‘slightly scabrid’, ‘pungent, sometimes prominently’, ‘rarely minutely mucronate’. Many are formed from adjectives. In English, an adverb formed from an adjective is typically indicated by the ‘-ly’ ending. In Latin it is formed in several ways.

With adjectives of Group A you add -e to the stem, e.g. dense from densus to form ‘densely’, and with those of Group B you add -ter or -iter, e.g. prominenter from prominens to form ‘prominently’, irregulariter from irregularis, ‘irregularly’. Adverbs are not declined, nor do they change with gender or number.

Examples

minute hirsutus minutely hairy

foliis minute hirsutis with leaves minutely hairy

fructus lateraliter complanatus fruit laterally flattened.

Many words are adverbs in their own right. Some examples are saepe (often), mox (soon), saltem (at least), iterum (again, a second time), deinde (thereafter). Stearn has a list of Latin adverbs on pp 104–106.

A pronoun indicates a person, thing, place, or quality without specifically naming it, e.g. I, you, they, it, the same, that, another. It is also used to replace a noun and so avoid the need to repeat it. In botanical Latin, you will almost never use the personal pronouns I, you, he, she, we and they, but you will probably want to use others. Commonly used are the personal pronoun is (it); the demonstrative ones hic (this, these) and ille (that, those); the possessive one suus (its, their); the relative one quod (which); and the definitive one idem (the same).

Two pronoun-like words (called pronoun-adjectives or determiners) are alius and alter. The first means ‘another’ or ‘other’ and is used when more than two items are being discussed. It is also used when contrasting items: ‘one . . ., the other . . .’, plural ‘some . . ., others . . .’.

The second is used when just two items are under discussion:

Like us, the Romans had both words and numerals for numbers, and had both cardinal numbers – answering the question ‘How many?’ (one, two. . .) – and ordinal numbers, answering the question ‘Which one in a series?’ (first, second. . .). A third set of numerals is the distributive adjectives answering the question ‘How many each?’ (one each, two each. . .). Roman numerals were in the form I, II, II, IV, V. . . X. . . C. . .. Hindu-Arabic numerals (1, 2, 3, 4, 5. . . 10. . . 100. . .) were developed in India in about the sixth century AD and arrived in Europe via the Arabs of North Africa during the Middle Ages.

In Latin, only the first three cardinal numerals – unus (1), duo (2), tres (3) – are declined (like adjectives). The others remain the same whatever the case and gender of the noun they are qualifying. In botanical descriptions it is easiest to avoid the words altogether by using numerals – and it saves space. This may be done regardless of the gender, number and case of the noun they are associated with.

A verb is a ‘doing’ word, i.e. it denotes an action. The most important aspects of verbs are person (I, you, he, she, it, we, they), number (singular, plural), voice (active, passive), tense (present, past, future, etc.), and mood (indicative, subjunctive, imperative). In Latin, each of these attributes is indicated by a single form of the verb, e.g. lego (I collect), legunt (they collect), legitur (it is collected), legistis (you have collected), lege! (collect!), lexerim (I might have collected). The basic part of a verb is called the stem, and the letters after it tell you the rest.

If you must know, the verb finite (i.e. limited by person and number) has three persons, two numbers, six tenses and three moods, while the verb infinite (not so limited) has infinitives, three participles, the gerund and gerundive and two supines. And there are two voices. And, on top of that, there are conjugations, four of them, plus – you guessed it – irregular, defective and what are called impersonal verbs. Fortunately, there is no need to learn these in detail, since those verbs used nowadays in botany are mostly third person singular, as set out below.

A noun is the name of a thing, person, place or quality, e.g. plant, Bentham, Australia, air, knowledge, beauty. A generic name is also a noun. A Latin noun has number (singular or plural) and gender (masculine, feminine or neuter). It is declined by changing the ending of the word in order to give different meanings and to show its relationship to other words in a sentence. These endings are called cases. There are five groups, or declensions, of nouns, called simply the First, Second, Third, Fourth and Fifth Declensions. Nouns of a declension form their word endings (cases) in the same way when they are declined. The various endings are attached to the stem of the word, which is the ‘core’ or basic part of a word that remains the same when letters are added to give different cases. The stem of a noun is derived differently according to its declension. To decline a noun fully is to list its forms in all the cases, both singular and plural.

Within a declension there are, for practical purposes, six cases, but for botanical Latin you need to know just five. Then, there are two numbers – singular when there is just one, and plural when there are two or more. The case endings are changed to indicate the plural form. Unfortunately, some case endings are used more than once with different meanings.

Time

You may wish to express time, e.g. the time when a flower opens or the fruit matures, or the season of flowering. To express a time at which something happens (date, time of day, season etc.), we use the ablative, e.g. hieme (in winter), nocte (at night). The time within which something happens is also shown by the ablative:

semina mensibus duobus [2] maturescentiaseed ripening within 2 months.

And the time during which something happens is shown by the accusative:

planta annos quinque [5] vivensplant living for 5 years.

Some useful expressions are:

in alabastro in bud

in maturitate at maturity

in juventute in youth, at a young state

ad anthesin/anthesem at flowering time

post anthesin/anthesem after the flower opens.

Habitat (Stearn pp. 197–200)

A plant’s habitat is usually included in a Latin description only if it is significant in distinguishing the taxon from a closely related one, e.g. growing on dry hills in contrast to one that grows in swamps. The common relevant verbs are:

habitat it lives

crescit it grows

occurrit it occurs

incolit it inhabits.

An adjective qualifies or adds meaning to a noun or pronoun by expressing a quality, e.g. a red flower, a prostrate shrub, a sweet scent, small spores, larger fronds. A Latin adjective must be declined so that its case, gender and number agree with those of the noun being qualified.

A participle is a part of a verb that can have the same function as an adjective, e.g. a climbing plant. It may be either a present participle (indicating something current) or a past participle (indicating something that has happened). In English the present participle is usually indicated by the ending ‘-ing’ (e.g. climbing, narrowing), and the past participle by the ending ‘-ed’ (e.g. rolled, folded). Past participles may have other endings, e.g. torn, seen.

Most descriptive specific epithets are either adjectives or adjectival in form, that is they describe an attribute of the plant. Sometimes we use a noun as an epithet and it is said to be in apposition since it is not necessarily explaining or qualifying the generic name and does not have to agree with it in number or gender. Unless it is indeclinable, however, its case does agree. This is important when it comes to writing diagnoses and both generic name and epithet may have to be in the dative or genitive, e.g. Nymphaea lotus (dative Nymphaeae loto), Asclepias fruticosa (genitive Asclepiadis fruticosae).