In Grower's Terms

A big commercial grower put out a guide to its hoyas in 2024. One plant is listed as Rubra, also called Krimson Princess. Another is Tricolor, also called Krimson Queen. Two names for each plant sounds generous. It is actually a problem. Only one of those words can be the plant's name. The other is something else, dressed up as a name.

This episode takes the word cultivar apart. What the Code requires before a set of plants earns the word. How a cultivar name is built, and when a name becomes established in print. Why a trade designation and a trademark are not cultivar names, and why a synonym is a different thing again. Then Christine Burton enters the story. Before there was a society to register hoya names, she wrote that she would not breed hoyas with no recorded means of identifying them. Then she helped build the society, launched its cultivar registry in 1987, and charged three dollars a name.

The episode closes with the mess as it stands today. One plant sold under two names, two plants sold under one name, a gap of roughly two decades with no appointed registration authority on any record we can find, and a registrar in place since 2023 whose registrations are free.

In Grower's Terms is the science behind the words plant people use. New episodes every other Friday.

Two leaves sit side by side on a table. One is a Monstera with a clean white half moon across it. The other is a Begonia dotted with silver spots that catch the light. They look like the work of the same brush. One of those pale patches is a passenger the plant has to feed every single day. The other never stopped working.

This episode works through what variegation actually is, where the word came from, and why one word covers at least six different things. Phil follows the broken tulips of the 1630s, the three cell layers inside a growing tip, Barbara McClintock and her speckled corn, and the reversion growers curse when a green shoot takes over. The back half gives hoya splash a fair hearing, what is proven, what is inferred, and what nobody has tested yet, including the light question sellers argue about.

Next time: the small spot on a stem where a bud lives, and why a single cutting can grow into a whole new plant.

Sources and further reading are in the companion post on the Gathering Moss blog.

Chapters

0:00 Two Leaves on a Table

1:49 Where the Word Comes From

2:39 The Broken Tulips

5:02 Three Layers and the Chimera

8:27 McClintock and the Speckled Corn

9:35 Which Leaf Pays the Bill

11:35 The Splash Verdict

14:56 Can Anyone Choose the Pattern

15:47 Back to the Table

The flowers are gone. A bare stalk remains. It looks finished, but before you reach for the clippers, there’s a story worth hearing.

In the premiere of In Grower’s Terms, Phil follows the word peduncle from the houseplant shelf to a whale’s tail, the human brain, and Washington’s cherry blossom watch. Along the way, learn to tell a peduncle from a pedicel and a petiole, and discover why a small piece of plant vocabulary can change what you see.

The science behind the words plant people use.