Botanic or Botanical, Garden or Gardens and Royal or not (Plant Portrait XXI*)

Should it be botanic or botanical? I'm pretty sure this ranks as the most common question I get at the end of a talk on anything to do with the Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria. Or indeed on anything.

As with all good questions, the answer is teasingly complex and poorly resolved. My stock answer is that botanically inclined gardens in the United Kingdom, Australia and Singapore - the 'soft' parts of the old British Empire - prefer Botanic. That seems to be true except in the rather odd case of the Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens which not only bucks the trend, but shoves the location in straight after the honorific rather than at the end (as we do in Victoria, for example).

In the USA, I'm fond of saying, they like Botanical. I can't find any reason (or rhyme) for this preference but it's become their way of doing things. As they are wont to do with the 'English' language generally. China, interestingly, follows the USA tradition with Botanical.

After talking last week to the Royal Historical Society of Victoria, it was pointed out to me that for them, the decision to use 'Historic' over 'Historical' was linguistic(al). Luckily, I've been reading yet another book on the use and abuse of our English language, which I enjoy doing from time to time.

This one is by Benjamin Dreyer, called Dreyer's English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style. The somewhat tongue-in-cheek title gives you sense of his less than dogmatic approach (similar, I must say, to Kingsley Amis - standing up for personal preferences but recognising that language will not be tamed entirely by any of us). 

In his chapter on The Confusables, Dreyer runs us through the difference between 'historic' and 'historical'. The first 'denotes significance', as in an historic event. The latter, denotes 'presence in the past'. So the 'historical' in Royal Historical Society of Victoria refers to it considering all things past rather than implying the society is itself old - although it is that too, having begun in 1909.

With 'classic' v. 'classical', Dreyer says the first should be used for a great example of something - a classic song - while the latter for civilisations or orchestral music of a certain kind. This all chimes with the approach taken by Henry Watson Fowler, who favours using words like historic and classic for those things of particular significance in the category. Kingsley Amis says the same about classic and classical in his King's English. (As for 'economic' v. 'economical' I've always argued that the former has less letters and is therefore the more economic of the words to use in almost any context.)

Carrying this over to 'botanic' and 'botanical' we might argue that the former be used for those botanic/botanical gardens of particularly high value or significance. Or we might argue, as Fowler does, that 'both forms are recorded from the mid-17th century onward, but botanical is now much more common of the two in Britain except in traditional names like the Botanic Garden of Oxford'. I'm not convinced that is true but who am I to argue with Fowler.

In any case, the vast majority of our botanic/botanical gardens in Australia are 'botanic' as are all the 'historic' ones apart from Hobart.

To round off my analysis, a couple of exceptions prove or disprove my rule of thumb: Chicago Botanic Garden (USA), Birmingham Botanical Gardens (UK) and Auburn Botanical Garden (Australia). The latter two are both youngish gardens so may support Fowler's view.

I should add that other than relying on translations of Chinese garden names from their country of origin, I haven't ventured into the nomenclature of countries speaking other than English.

As to the prefix Royal, there are three Royal botanic/botanical gardens in Australia (in Sydney, Melbourne and Hobart), two in the United Kingdom (in London and Edinburgh), one in Canada (in Ontario), one in Trinadad and Tobago (Port of Spain), one in Sri Lanka (Peradeniya), and one in Spain (in Madrid; the Real Jardín Botánico). That's nine, but there are sure to be some I've missed.

How does one become a Royal Botanic/Botanical Garden? My understanding is that one writes to one's Monarch, seeking their favour and approval. That is what happened in Melbourne (granted in 1957) and Sydney (granted in 1959).

As to whether it is 'Garden' or 'Gardens', that's equally eclectic and eccentric, with those using 'Gardens' usually arguing their organisation cares for more than one garden, although not meaning separate sites, such as Melbourne and Cranbourne in our case. They/we will refer to a 'collective' of gardens, including perhaps a rose garden, an Australian garden, a woodland garden, and so on. Hence we have Melbourne Gardens and Cranbourne Gardens, within Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria.

Those who go singular say: it's a garden, get over it.

Images: Three Royal botanic gardens where I have worked - Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria (Melbourne Gardens and Cranbourne Gardens), Royal Botanic Gardens Kew (Kew Gardens and Wakehurst Place) and Royal Botanic Garden Sydney (part of Royal Botanic Gardens and Domain Trust, Botanic Gardens and Centennial Parklands).

*Occasional posts are called Plant Portraits (in brackets after the blog title and marked with an asterisk). These are usually about things other than, but including passing reference to, plants (in this case it's (Royal) Botanic(al) Garden(s) nomenclature). Often, they will be inspired by a book or something else in my cultural life. The idea is borrowed (very loosely and with due deference) from Milan Kundera's 'Novels, Existential Soundings', in his Encounters. These essays were as much, or more, about things other than the book being reviewed. In my case, it could be that every story has a plant to tell...