Plant name changes

by Patrick
(Lancashire, England )

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

Click here to add your own comments

Jan 29, 2019

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.

Click here to add your own comments

Join in and write your own page! It's easy to do. How? Simply click here to return to Ask the Horticulturist.