ANYONE who has had just a passing interest in wild flowers, bugs and beasties, or bird-watching, will soon become aware that most living things have two distinct sets of names - an English common name, such as primrose or jackdaw, and a Latin name, which is usually written in italics and is composed of two separate names - eg Primula vulgaris or Corvus monedula.

I have to admit I am terrible at both remembering and pronouncing the Latin names and tend to stick to using the common names. However, I do see the sense and importance of using the Latin names as they are internationally recognised, in all languages, and the two components of the Latin name mean that related species are easy to identify.

An example of this is cowslips, which resemble primroses and are, indeed, the same plant family, and hence they share the same Latin genus name, Primula. Jackdaws and rooks are both part of the crow family and share the same Latin genus of Carvus.

If you start trying to identify invertebrates you are going to be stuck with having to use Latin names, as only the biggest, boldest and commonest invertebrates have been given common names. With other wildlife groups there is usually a wealth of common names that are both colourful and interesting.

No more so than with wild flowers, where we get some super names such as ploughman's spikenard and squinancywort. Others have names which make it easy to visualise the plant, like bluebells. However, some flower names can be quite misleading.

Some wild flowers end with the name "wort" but this is just old English for weed, and the plants are neither related nor share any herbal properties.

St John's wort and woundwort are both important medicinal plants, but water dropwort is anything but.

There are some plants which end in the word "bane", and this seemed to indicate that the plant is poisonous to a particular animal. In most cases this seems to be true.

For example, fleabane is used to kill off fleas, cowbane is a danger to cattle, and wolfsbane was used historically to make poison to kill wolves.

However, there is a harmless little plant of woody, shady places, known as leopardsbane, which certainly will be no use at all if you ever have the need to get rid of a troublesome leopard.