One year Dad grew a patch of the most beautiful daisies I had ever seen. The purity and freshness of the big white flowers in the dirty old city was enchanting and I knew that one day I would want to grow daisies like these. Not just any daisy, but this exact daisy, so I memorised the name - chrysanthemum spectabile 'Cecilia'. When I rattled it off at home I was accused of 'showing off' (Scottish children were never encouraged to show off!) so I kept quiet about it after that, but was hooked on the latin names. I loved them, and never had any trouble remembering them. When I went to secondary school I studied Latin, and, older still, when I was given a copy of the Reader's Digest Encyclopaedia of Garden Plants and Flowers by my sister and brother in law, I just read it from start to finish, as you would any book, and without really trying, the latin names stuck.
So if it sounds like showing off, I don't mind - they read like poetry to me, and meant a lot to me in the years when I dreamed of having a garden of my own in the country and growing all my favourite flowers.