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| Hopi tea, greenthread, Thelesperma megapotamicum |
Naturally, we have plant common names whose meanings or nuances have changed. Some are insulting or objected to by the people they refer to. People regularly suggest changing ones they don’t like. The American Public Garden Association (link) asked for input and in 2021 published a report on “Potentially Problematic Common Names in North American Public Gardens”. They found a long list of “potentially problematic” words, noting, that “… words may seem completely benign to one group, culture, or language while holding offensive and egregious connotations for another.” (p. 26 )
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| black-eyed Susans, Rudbeckia hirta |
The catch, as the American Public Garden Association report points out, is knowing if the name is positive rather than negative. Erasing historic or cultural references is undesirable. For example, the name black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia hirta) is seen by some people as indicating she has a black eye from having been hit, not an image you want. However, probably black-eyed was a compliment and based on a popular ballad of the 18th century, "Sweet William’s Farewell to Black-Ey’d Susan” which goes in part
"All in the Downs the fleet was moor'd,
The streamers waving in the wind,
When black-ey'd Susan came aboard.
Oh! where shall I my true love find!
...
"O Susan, Susan, lovely dear,
My vows shall ever true remain;
Let me kiss off that falling tear,
We only part to meet again."
...
https://www.poetry-archive.com/g/sweet_williams_farewell/
Black-eyed Susan was lovely and loved.
The goal, according to the American Public Garden Association is "to create relevant, culturally significant common names that stick.”
That is the balance I am arguing for. Let us remove the offensive terms, without removing the cultural background of plants.
Our relationship with the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas is so fraught that there is much to consider in changing names. We pushed Native Americans off their land and too often did not spend any time learning from them. So I like plant names that remind me that for thousands of years, people have used this plant: for example, Hopi tea (Thelesperma species, also called green thread).
Arriving on the continent, the settlers created common names for virtually all the plants, since virtually all American plants were new to them. Often they named them after something familiar, adding "Indian" to distinguish the new one: corn (at the time meaning any grain) and Indian corn (Zea mays); hemp (Cannabis sativa) and Indian hemp (Apocynum candidum); pinks (Dianthus species) and Indian pinks (Spigelia marilandica). Old herbal books, for example Milpaugh 1892, Keville 1991, and Hutchins 1992 have numerous American plants with "Indian" in the common name. For most of them, we could substitute American- (or Canadian-) for Indian-, but often they have other, more widely used, common names.
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| Indian corn, Zea mays |
Indian is a problematic word. From the beginning, it was mis-applied; Columbus thought he was in India and called the people he met Indians. But it stuck. Often Indigenous People in North America report they dislike the term “Indian” but many like the alternatives less. They prefer not lumping the diverse people here when Columbus arrived but rather naming the particular tribe.
The problem for me is that dropping "Indian" for a descriptor like "common" or "marsh" risks loses the historical reference. Western science came to the Americas after the Indigenous Peoples had been identifying and using the plants of the Americas for millennia. But precious little that knowledge is currently transmitted to the next generation. Names that make one curious, such as camas or Indian paintbrush, make a small contribution to acknowledging Indigenous knowledge.
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| Indian hemp, hemp dogbane, Apocynum candidum |
To explain with an example, the plant called Indian hemp (Apocynum candidum, dogbane family, Apocynaceae) was gathered and turned into rope, twine, and clothing by tribes from the Ojibwe (eastern North America) to the Luiseño (in California). To get rid of “Indian," people are saying "hemp dogbane." Apocynum candidum is an American native plant. But "dogbane" as a common name comes from A. candidum’s European relatives and “hemp” is Cannabis sativa, also a European plant. The name hemp dogbane obscures the fact that this is an American plant, and one that Indigenous Americans used. What can we call it to retain that heritage?
When we are changing common names, it is important to consider how not to drop words that remind us that the tribes of the Americas knew and used the plant. One way is to ask the Indigenous name for the plant and use that. Camas, squash, and puccoon are examples of Indigenous names used as common names for their plants.
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| hairy puccoon, Lithospermum caroliniense |
I write in this blog about plants and I love to include folklore. Most common European plants have cute stories, from knowing if your love is true (mullein) to the story that irises grow where the goddess of the rainbow has stepped. I can rarely find much folklore for American native plants (though that is steadily improving!). Surely every Hinono'eino grandmother added a story to each plant as she taught her grandchildren to recognize them. So much has been lost! Neutral names like hemp dogbane and green thread lose even that.
It would be ideal to use the name that this Hinono'eino grandmother would have taught her grandchildren.
Of course, that gets us into “which tribe’s name?" One approach is to make a list of the names from several tribes and pick one. An AI-aided Google search gave me, for Sorghastrum nutans: Lakota pȟeží šašá íŋkpa žiží, "red grass with a fluffy, light-colored end”, Omaha Ponca ppēži "long/tall grass”, Cherokee selagwû'tsĭ usdí-ga “small forage grass” and Pawnee rakis “broom/ broomgrass.” So we could say red grass, or long grass, or small fodder grass or broom grass.
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| Sorghastrum nutans |
Why translate it? Call it pȟeží šašá or ppeźi or selagwû’tsĭ or rakis; we have Indigenous American words in English already, from chipmunk (Ojibwe) to hickory (Powhatan) to camas (Nez Perce).
One answer to “which tribe’s name?” is “the ones who lived right here.” We don’t need an international common name: common names have always been regional and the scientific name provides an international name. So we can straight-forwardly embrace the name that was used locally: “here in western Nebraska, we call it phezí sasá, its scientific name Sorghastrum nutans.”
Another answer is to keep “Indian” as better than traditionless words.
A third answer is to turn scientific names into common names, sorghastrum and apocynum, but that loses the cultural references.
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| squash, Cucurbita (Squash is a mangling of the Narragansett name but much better than northern wild melon or other bland or Eurocentric name.) |
Comments and corrections welcome.
Disclaimer: internet searches are not linguists. Certainly Lakota or Omaha, Cherokee or Pawnee speakers would correct the names I gave above (and I would gladly retype). But the point is, the plants had names before Europeans arrived.
Another thought on this topic: a lot of work is needed to learn the names the local tribes used. So we need to get started.
References
American Public Garden Association. 2021. “Potentially Problematic Common Names in North American Public Gardens”. link Accessed 8/8/26
Heath, D. B. editor. 1963. Mourt’s Relation, A Journal of the Pilgrim's at Plymouth. Appleworks Books, Plymouth, Massachusetts. online link (editions vary, search on "artificially" to see my example.) Accessed 8/4/26
Hutchens, A. R. 1992. A Handbook of Native American Herbs. Shambala Publications. Boulder, Colorado.
Jim, C. 2025. Baby questions for white people Ep. 2. Native/Native American? Indigenous? Indian? What is the right terminology? Instagram. link Accessed 8/7/26
Milpaugh, C. F. 1974. Originally 1892. American Medicinal Plants. facsimilie edition, Dover Publications. New York.
Moerman, D. 1999. Apocynum candidum Native American Ethnobotany database. link (accessed 8/6/26)
Yellow Bird, M. 1999. What we want to be called: Indigenous Peoples' perspectives on racial and ethnic identity labels. American Indian Quarterly. 23: 1-21.
New book coming later this year: Plants You Meet Everywhere. The stories of really cosmopolitan plants such as marigolds, bougainvillea and cheatgrass.
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