Plant name changes

by Patrick
(Lancashire, England )

Hylotephium, The Plant Formerly Known as Sedum

Hylotephium, The Plant Formerly Known as Sedum

Hi i am studying for a qualification in horticulture. I wondering how to define why plants change name and maybe some examples of recent name changes
Thankyou

Comments for Plant name changes

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The Plants Don't Care What You Call Them
by: Jacki Cammidge, Certified Horticulturist

Plant names are for our use only. The reason for any changes are that botanists sometimes get ahead of themselves, give a plant a name, then find that someone else should have first dibs.

One common plant that has had a name change fairly recently is Sedum, which now is called Hylotephium.

This is how it looks;


Hylotelephium is a genus of flowering plants in the stonecrop family Crassulaceae. It includes about 33 species distributed in Asia, Europe, and North America.[1]

Species in the genus, formerly included in Sedum, are popular garden plants, known as "sedum", "stonecrop", "live-for-ever" or "orpine".


That's a quote from Wikipedia.

The ones that have changed are only the ones I call Sedum for borders. These are taller and a lot more robust than the smaller ground covering species.

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