Dr Gregory J Kenicer is the author of Scottish Plant Names, Scottish Plant Lore and Plant Magic. A botanist and tutor at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, he has inspired learners of all ages for 20 years. He has published numerous scientific papers on the evolution and diversity of peas and beans but the fantastical relationships between plants and people is where his heart really lies.

Describe the nature around you at the moment.

In the Botanics in Edinburgh, nature is a beautiful blend of the global and local, with incredible communities of plants finding new interactions with the local Scottish wildlife - whether that’s trees originally from the Pacific North West of the US playing host to local woodpigeon nests, to Chilean bamboos playing host to bacterial spotting in the leaves. Just behind me are some incredible stately southern-hemisphere tree ferns in a sheltered courtyard.

Where do you feel most at ease?

Absolutely anywhere you can spot nature works for me. It’s more the action, or practice of being at ease than the location, and nature prompts that practice. So, even an old building site in a city centre with myriad ‘weedy’ plant species just doing their thing is just as soothing as a hillside in Scotland or Japan. It also helps if you have a hand lens and binoculars to help get different perspectives of scale - that act of just observing puts me at ease.

What is something exciting you have learned about Scottish names for plants?

The comparison between names and evolution is fascinating. Some are like Ginkgo trees - living fossils that hark back to truly ancient times. In many European languages, including those of Scotland they are real core plants that are fundamental to Indo-European languages - birch and poppy are great examples. They can be traced across dozens of languages over Millennia and testify to the cultural importance of these plants to people from some of the earliest times. Then contrast that with names that popped up in the last century, often very locally. One classic is Singerweed - a name for rosebay willowherb (Chamerion angustifolium) that grew up in profusion at the site of the Singer sewing machine factory in Clydebank.

Linguists often use a similar kind of analysis to us evolutionary botanists when they are looking at the relationships between languages, building up trees of relationships based on similarities. We use DNA and they use sound and inflection - I love thinking about the evolution of language as a kind of Tree of Life.

In what ways has language influenced plant names through time?

Some names are seemingly eternal, while others are much more recent and reactive. One really interesting aspect is when a misspelling, or mishearing results in a name being written or heard differently and this ‘orthographic variant’ name evolves into something else, picking up a new meaning as it goes along. Some of the classics are cleavers (Galium aparine), known widely as both sticky Willy or sticky willow. The former may be a sectarian slur against William of Orange, while the latter may simply be a less controversial version of the name (as this straggly hedgerow plant hardly looks willow-like).

Some names pick up on more intricate aspects of language. In Scots, names that reference a ‘gowk’ can mean either a cuckoo or a fool, while in English ‘cuckoo’ can hint at a cuckold. In many cases plants with these names might simply flower at the end of April or beginning of May, coinciding with the Cuckoo’s return. The lovely cuckooflower (Cardamine pratensis) of wet meadows is a good example of this. Others such as wood sorrel (Oxalis acetosella), known as gowk’s meat in Scots, suggest only a fool would eat this tiny but tasty plant to fill their belly. It’s important to note, though that many of these are only speculative interpretations. Indeed this is part of the fun, trying to work out why something might have picked up a particular name.

Which song, book or poem nurtured your relationship with nature?

Inevitably, a wide array of books on myths and legends seeded a fascination with humanity’s relationship to nature and I do love the way nature is woven into more modern works like Lord of the Rings, but the really inspirational works were field guides - the Collins ones on the Seashore and Plants, and Usborne’s Animal Tracks and Signs blew the world of biodiversity wide open for me.

What rituals do you practise to keep you grounded?

I do still do the old folkloric things like a pinch of salt over the shoulder if you spill it, avoid crossing on the stairs and a bit of ornithomancy by counting magpies. But weirdly, I’ve also got into the habit of emptying the cutlery from the dishwasher in a very particular, systematic way that I (mostly jokingly) treat as a way to work out what the coming days might hold. So, dropping a spoon on the floor, or putting a fork in the knife bit of the drawer spells bad news. The cool thing is quite how much power you could see it having over your actions so it is easy to see how these rituals evolve. Maybe I need something more sensible and truly grounding.

What kind of ancestor would you like to be?

Ooh. I might be a bit pragmatic here and just say that as one ancestor among trillions, going back billions of years, I’d not presume to influence all that much in the big scheme of things. I can’t help thinking Nature is far, far more resilient than we give it credit for, so I’d just implore our descendants to be observant, adaptable and keep a balanced perspective on both the big picture and the here-and-now.

When did you have your last sea bath? (Asked by Kalpa Gandhari from Sea Sisters)

My last sea bath was a wee snorkel three weeks ago, and bitterly cold.

What question would you like to ask to the next person on #TNK?

What’s your favourite symbiosis, and why?

And could you suggest someone else or other organisations you admire that we could approach for #TheNatureKind

Leonie Alexander, who does loads of work on urban biodiversity, and the Forth Estuary is great. Phil Lusby, my great friend, incredible naturalist and so much more. Botanical Society of the British Isles (BSBI).

You can find out more about Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh here.

You can order Scottish Plant Names here.