Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Botanical names are infuriating

I guess to some people, having the real botanical name for their plant may not be as important as it is to others. But once a person dives deeper into the world of plants and starts collecting different cultivars, or different plants in the same family, the botanical names become more important. Honestly, the only plants I want and need to be correctly named are my gesneriads and my hoya's, and this is because I have a growing collection, and I try not to buy the same plant.A while back I bought what was named a Black Pagoda lipstick plant. It was on clearance, near death, but because I didn't not have this cultivar, I grabbed it. It has grown beautifully and is very lush and full of buds. Well as I was googling things last night, I realized that it was not a Black Pagoda lipstick plant. The flowers do not resemble this at all. After much reading, I deemed my plant to be Aeschynanthus Longicaulis, a parent of the Black Pagoda. So whoever gave this plant it's tag, messed up.

As if it isn't' bad enough to see all those stupid "tropical foliage" tags, the plants they do give names for are most likely wrong. So here is a pic of the flower of the plant formerly known as Black Pagoda, now Longicaulis. This link shows a pic, and has other pics of the cultivars in the aeschynanthus family.

2 comments:

MrBrownThumb said...

I'm with you on the names.

I'm assuming the plant came from that company with the exotic angels tag? The pot color looks just like them.

Tracy said...

I wasn't sure on this one, lucky for me I have kept most of the plant tags, so I went digging. Yes it is an EA plant.....hehe.....it says "I am known as Lipstick 'Black Pagoda'"
Aeschynanthus radicans.......so the tag is completely wrong...lol.