NOWADAYS, thanks predominantly to air travel, the world is becoming a smaller place and speaking one language, even English, is no longer enough.

It’s so important that we learn to speak and understand other languages and cultures to travel to new places and meet new and interesting people.

If this subject ever comes up at new introductions, my husband likes to joke that “Kirsty speaks three languages: English, French and Latin".

In truth, I don’t actually speak Latin but I do use it everyday at work when talking about plants.

People ask why I bother using botanical names instead of common names. Well firstly, unlike common names, the botanical name is unique to a specific plant – no other plant in the entire world will share the same name and (b) common names were beaten out of me during my three years at Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.

On a serious note, it’s good to get into the habit of using botanical names because they eliminate confusion when searching for them in the garden centre, in books or online.

We didn’t always refer to plants in this way.

Centuries ago, in the dark days of botany, plants were known by long, descriptive sentences but in the 18th century, Carl Linnaeus brought order to chaos and devised a binomial naming system to give each plant a name composed of two parts, genus and species.

Nowadays the application of the binomial naming system is governed by a set of rules laid down in the International Code of Nomenclature.

Have you ever looked up a plant name in a textbook, for example Quercus robur (L.) and wondered what the ‘L’ means? It’s the abbreviated ‘authority’ – a way of designating the scientist who first published the name.

And you’ll find many with the authority ‘L’ for, you guessed it, Mr Carl Linnaeus himself.

Many common names have their roots in the botanical name. Take Hemerocallis for example.

It's from the Greek ‘hemeros’ meaning ‘day’ and ‘kallos’ meaning ‘beauty’. You probably know them as day lillies. This is fun, lets do another.

Chionodoxa – also from the greek ‘chion’ meaning ‘snow’ and ‘doxa’ meaning ‘glory’. Put them together and you get Glory of the Snow. Botanical names are far more descriptive and informative than common names, often alluding to their country of origin, colour or uses.

For example the botanical name for sage, Salvia, comes from the latin for ‘to heal’ referring to the plants medicinal qualities. And the species name ‘officinalis’ means ‘of the shops’ possibly referring to the economic value of the edible Common Sage.

Studies have shown that learning another language can increase your brain capacity and improve your memory. But if French isn’t for you, try Latin.

Granted, you won’t be able to use it to converse with a great number of people (except the pope perhaps?) but you’re family and friends will be bowled over when you start referring to English oaks as Quercus robur.