Botany, Backpacks, and the Burden of Latin: Why I've Passed By Yosemite's Wildflowers
- Yosemite Me
- Oct 21
- 5 min read
"If you do not know the names of things,
the knowledge of them is lost, too."
Carl Linnaeus, Swedish Botanist (1707-1778)
It is a truth universally acknowledged—at least by anyone who has ever tried to pronounce Koeleria without sounding like a sneeze—that Latin, though elegant in theory, can be a cruel companion in the field. My inability to utilize this ancient language is, I suspect, one of the reasons I’ve managed to admire Yosemite’s flowers only in passing, never in proper Muir-like reverence.
You see, while I do love John Muir—his prose, his passion, his visionary sense that every pine needle could initiate a sermon—I cannot quite share his enthusiasm for the precise botanical naming of things. In his letters to his friend and mentor, Mrs. Jeanne Carr, Muir delighted in rolling Latin off his pen as if each syllable were a hymn. Consider the following mouthful:
“The extremely fine and diffuse purple Agrostis contrasted most divinely with the taller, strict, taper-finished Koeleria. The long-awned single Stipa too and P. clandestinum, with their broad ovate leaves and purple muffy pistils, played an important part . . . “
Now, I am as fond of purple muffy pistils as the next person, but by the time I get to P. clandestinum, I’ve already lost the thread. The moment Muir’s meadow becomes a vocabulary quiz, my romantic notions of nature turn into mild academic panic.
The Weight of Words (and Backpacks)
This linguistic limitation is, of course, compounded by the realities of modern hiking. I admire Muir’s habit of ambling joyfully through Yosemite meadows with nothing more than a tin cup and a biscuit, stopping every few yards to note the elegant taper-finished Koeleria. But let’s be honest: Muir didn’t have to deal with a 40-pound backpack designed by engineers who apparently never tested their product on a human spine.
When I’m on the trail, the destination is my goal, not the microflora along the way. Each step brings me closer to camp, and the idea of pausing mid-ascent to dig out a camera—or worse, a field guide—feels about as likely as reciting the periodic table in Latin. With age has come not only wisdom but also an awareness that bending over with a heavy pack risks an unintended forward roll. While Muir might have described that as “a spontaneous act of communion with the earth,” I would call it “falling face-first into a shrub.”
Muir, Mrs. Carr, and the Courtship of Science
Part of me suspects that Muir’s botanical flourishes were not entirely altruistic. His correspondence with Mrs. Carr, a learned and older friend, often reads like a mixture of earnest scientific observation and youthful attempts to impress. After all, what better way to display your intellectual vigor than by casually dropping Poa pratensis into a letter?
Yet even in his taxonomic showmanship, Muir found real joy. His words suggest that Latin names, far from being barriers, were his way of conversing with nature in its native tongue. For him, to write Agrostis was not to classify—it was to praise. And perhaps that is where I fall short: I lack the patience, and maybe the linguistic romance, to let taxonomy feel poetic.
Linnaeus and the Love of Inconvenience
Carl Linnaeus, the father of modern plant taxonomy, was, of course, the ultimate romantic of inconvenience. According to Wikipedia—a modern authority that would no doubt horrify him—he “sometimes dismounted on the way to examine a flower or rock” and was “particularly interested in mosses and lichens.” Imagine the devotion! While most of us would see an inconvenient patch of damp fuzz, Linnaeus saw an entire universe worthy of classification.
I picture him trudging through Lapland, the reindeer eyeing him with mild curiosity as he stoops to admire lichen, his mind buzzing with Latin syllables. He didn’t merely name plants; he constructed a world order out of them. Meanwhile, I can barely differentiate between “moss” and “moss that is not moss.”
The Art of Doing One Thing at a Time
Perhaps I could learn from Muir’s confession to Mrs. Carr:
“I do not believe that study, especially of the Natural Sciences, is incompatible with ordinary attention to business; still, I seem to be able to do but one thing at a time.”
A kindred spirit! I, too, can only do one thing at a time, and usually that thing is “keep walking.” Attempting to hike and identify flowers would not only divide my focus but also triple the number of things I could potentially trip over. Muir may have been able to hold a plant in one hand and a notebook in the other, but I suspect even he occasionally mistook a sedge for a sandwich.
Pliny, Perspective, and a Latin Lesson I Can Manage
If there’s any Latin I might yet learn, it would come from Pliny the Elder, who wrote in his preface, Vita vigilia est—“to be alive is to be watchful.” Pliny’s idea that wakefulness adds to life, rather than subtracts from it, offers a comforting perspective. Perhaps the real task is not to memorize Agrostis or Koeleria, but to remain awake to their presence.
Maybe that’s the sort of Latin lesson I can manage: one phrase, no conjugations, and plenty of room for interpretation. If I can simply stay “watchful” in the wilderness—aware of color, shape, and the quiet miracle of petals unfurling—I’ll have done something Muir would approve of, even if I can’t name the flower doing the unfurling.
Toward a New Goal
Still, I occasionally wonder if I might modify my hiking goal: instead of relentlessly chasing destinations, perhaps I could aim to identify one plant per trip. One! I could even photograph it for later study, though I admit that multitasking remains a dubious prospect. Most likely, I would end up with a camera full of blurry images labeled “Possibly purple, definitely plant.”
Yet there’s a kind of humor and humility in that, too. The natural world doesn’t mind our ignorance—it only asks that we notice. And maybe that’s the essence of Muir’s joy, Linnaeus’s zeal, and Pliny’s vigilance all rolled together: to look closely, even clumsily, and find wonder in the details.
So, while I may never recite Latin with Muir’s lyric precision or balance a backpack with Linnaeus’s stoic grace, I can at least keep my eyes open and my knees unbruised. After all, Vita vigilia est. To be alive is to be watchful—and occasionally, to mispronounce Agrostis with feeling.
Yosemite Wildflowers and a Foray Into Photography
I am sharing the flower photos below that I took while hiking in Yosemite National Park. I believe I have identified them accurately according to their Latin classification. Identifying the proper subspecies of flowers from the many different varieties that exist has been the hardest thing I have done all month, despite using "plant ID Apps" (they only provide probabilities of certainty).
I have also indicated the date the photo was taken and, most importantly, its location in Yosemite National Park. Enjoy with Muir-like reverence!
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