Floral Forms and Usesĭaisies - create a natural meadow look. Monochromatic or one-color gardens rely almost entirely on shape to carry the design. Here is a guide to some basic flower forms and how they might be used in your garden. Form adds texture and depth in any garden design. By incorporating different forms, your eyes will travel from one shape to another, creating a more interesting image. Comparing and contrasting flower shapes can help you discover what makes interesting and exciting combinations apart from flower color. Shapes create an atmosphere and make a statement in your garden. Learning some of these terms can help you recognize and appreciate the great beauty and variety of flower shapes and provide a new way of looking at your garden. For example, flowers can be arranged in a cyme, a corymb, or an umbrel (like Queen Anne's lace) depending on how the individual flower stalks arise from the main stem. There are many botanical terms that serve as a sort of shorthand in describing plants and can help in their correct identification. The legendary taxonomist Carl Linnaeus thought its flowers and round leaves looked like a classical battlefield trophy made up of the shields and bloodied helmets of the defeated enemy. Snapdragons are in the genus Antirrhinum, from the Greek word meaning "like a nose or snout." The nasturtium also owes its name to its form the botanical name, Tropaeolum, comes from tropaion, the Greek word for trophy. Plant names, both botanical and common, can often give a clue to the flower's shape and sometimes even its color. The botanical name of the common sunflower is Helianthus, from the Greek work for sun (helios) and flower (anthos). Morphology, or the study of the shapes of plants and their flowers, is fundamental to the study of plants and to their classification. Plants are often grouped or classified according to the shapes of their flowers and plants with similar flowers are usually closely related. For instance, most members of the daisy and sunflower family ( Asteraceae) have distinct, easily-recognized, flower shapes as do the parsley and carrot family ( Apiaceae) with flowers that look like Queen Anne's lace.