I saw these plants quite emaciated and being suffocated under my lilac bush 2 years ago. Unaware of what they were I dug them up in 3 clumps and re-planted them in a vacant space in the garden. Since then they have thrived. They flower in late summer/early fall and on a warm sunny day, the bees (of both the bumble and honey persuasions) are attracted in droves. However the mint is constantly vying for space.
I don't know what this plant is. Neither does my Mom, the time-honoured gardner that she is. Can anyone help? Area is south Ontario Canada. Image at:
When Sedum section Telephium was raised to the rank of a separate genus, it was named Hylotelephium by H.Ohba in 1978 because the generic name Telephium was already in use for a completely different group of plants.
RHS plantfinder is completely out-of-date for Sedum as well as many other genera of plants. It is not a reliable reference at all.
Despite the fact that the average gardener has absolutely no idea why any plant is so named the way it is, I will tell you why.
Bottom line:
Type species for genus Sedum L. is Sedum acre L. and is a dwarf evergreen perennial with connate kyphocarpic carpels.
Genus Hylotelephium H.Ohba (formerly Sedum section Telephium) are deciduous perennials, usually with a tuberous rootstock, and with separate stipitate (slender stalked) carpels.
It should be obvious that the growth form of Hylotelephium is very different from that of typical Sedum.
Dissect the flowers and you will the differences between the two genera.
While this is all well and good in the interest of taxonomic accuracy, you will not find these plants in the commercial trade listed under this name, nor will you find Chamaecyparis nootkatensis listed as Xanocyparis, or Platycladus listed as Biota or seldom Cimicifuga listed as Actaea or even very often Clematis paniculata correctly labeled as C. terniflora. Old habits die hard.
You really shouldn't make excuses for the sorry state of horticultural knowledge unless you are willing to accept the blame for it being so bad.
Horticulture has long been only the idiot stepchild of botany when it should be applied botany.
Most of the new gardening books are only lame rehashing of the older obsolete books with more pictures with little or no effort made to bring the information up-to-date.
The commercial trade is in most cases even worse. They are just hustling plants with little or no regard for the plants being correctly named. Only the specialty nurseries make an effort to have plants with proper names. Even many of them are still using obsolete or fictitious names.
There is the attitude in the trade that there is no money to be made in striving for accuracy nor does the public demand it. Actually correctly named and documented "heirloom" plants are much more valuable than mass produced garbage plants of dubious origin.
While I pretty much agree with all parts of that rant, "on the other hand" to expect to find a great deal of astronomy expertise at a UFO convention is unrealistic, or to demand a thoroughly expert assessment of the history of Canada from a picture book published for tourists. One doesn't expect up-to-date hard science from pop books & how-to books.
Gardening books tend to be about gardening not taxonomy, & sometimes not even about gardening but about the photographs. Yet when better authors do get into the taxonomical arguments for certain species, it is often about the muddle of disagreements & contradicitions & who recognizes which synonyms as definitive & how many other taxomic namnes it has had all the way back to Clusius & whether or not certain subspecies are still recognized or if they're only variants or only cultivated forms or naturally occurring hybrids with something else the taxonomic standing of which is still debated -- it's not necessarily all that apropos of gardening, though it certainly interests me. I was this week trying to sort out the names of Tulipa sylvestris, & quite enjoyed that minor bit of research, but can't imagine that the majority of gardeners would find that whole story useful.
One reason something like Cimicifuga doesn't get its name changed to Actaea in garden shops even after four years is because about a bazillion color-picture name tags were printed up & they have to have to be used up before new ones will be printed, plus Cimicifuga has even worked its way into the "common name" department in lieu of Snakeroot, so to change it suddenly would confuse customers not aware of a name-change & who are not shopping for plants in order to get a taxonomy lesson. In some cases the "correction" of a name is only reported in some specialized botanical magazine with a print-run of 500 copies subscribed only to the largest university libraries so no wonder it takes a while to filter down; & sometimes a mistake is so longstanding that even primary collections on which the science is based have not been corrected so how could some mere nursery retailer know about it.
So while your rant is correct in substance it's also understandable & forgiveable.
I was not saying the horticultural literature needs to give the full history of a particular plant's naming but only to use the currently accepted names and not those that have been out of date for 200 years.
In the 1800's the term "variety" was used indiscriminately to describe both botanical varieties collected from wild populations and garden cultivars of selected plants and garden hybrids. Nowadays, botanical varieties and garden cultivars are recognized as being two very different entities with their naming governed by completely different rules of nomenclature. The problem is that many in the horticultural community, including many celebrities that should know better, are either unaware of the rules of nomenclature or prefer to ignore them. They are doing the horticultural community a great disservice by doing so.
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such as Hortus Third, that are supposed to be registries of valid accepted names have failed miserable in actual practice and only added to the confusion. The story goes that most of the work done on Hortus Third was done by newbie grad students and not experts in most of the plant groups and genera covered and was not properly researched at all.
The latest botanical research seldom filters down into the popular literature, such as Horticulture magazine, but when it does, it often shakes things up in the horticultural community and creates renewed interest in undeservedly long forgotten or ignored plant groups. I have seen it happen several times in recent years.
Cereus-validus wrote ".........Only the specialty nurseries make an effort to have plants with proper names.Even many of them are still using obsolete or fictitious names. ........" Problem is that much less than 1 gardener in 100 is interested in anything than plants that will "Look pretty" in their garden.If only there were more "Plants people" who were really interested and collected plants then life for the small specialist nursery would be a lot better and it might even be worth putting multiple names on plants. After all a lot of people come in asking /or looking for a plant by a name that they have been told or have read at some time, often they don't know what the plant looks like, so if they don't find anything with the name they know then they don't buy. It takes time for name changes to filter down to the public. It's bad enough trying to keep up when you are in the trade as there is no one place that everyone can access easily and at a reasonable price that will keep you up to date. I know you don't think a lot of the "Plant Finder" but it is one reference point available to both the professional and the keen amateur.
It's not just the horticulturalists that get the names wrong. It often takes the botanists some time to even get corrected/new names published, never mind for the community to catch up.
And Botanic Gardens seem to regularly mislabel plants.
An interest in the taxonomy is a sidelight rather than central feature of gardening. It's important work, as science is important stuff, but its applicatioin to gardening & the nursery industry is to en extent tangential.
If growers & retailers thought it was just awfully important to stay on top of the taxonomy, in some cases they'd be throwing away thousands of dollars worth of tags & printing up thousands of dollars worth of new tags, only to discover that the arguing taxonomists have decided on a third or fourth name instead, or in some cases decided the previous name was good enough after all! Ipheion uniflorum is one such example; The genus Ipheion has been "decidced" on two occasions with other names in between the decisions, & is presently recategorized Tristagma, but the arguments are not settled & next year it could very well be decisively Ipheion for a third time. Or Pulsatilla vulgaris with taxonomists arguing that it should be returned to the genus Anemone.
Most of us garden blilthely on never knowing what taxonomists are crabbing about this month, & most of those taxonomists couldn't grow a healthy attractive garden if their lives depended on it, though they could beat us in the fine art of slicing up pistils & stamins.
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