Sowing botanical ignorance - common names

From a botanical perspective, common names are generally a nuisance, but at times the misinform the amateur.  So understand this, common names don't mean a thing.  A common and very annoying purveyor of terrible made-up common names is the mail-order, you've seen their cheap ass ads in the Sunday newspaper inserts, Blech's, or something very similar to that.  They tend to sell very young plants for very cheap prices thereby providing you exactly get your money's worth, but nothing at all like what is illustrated to the point that it's only a short step away from fraud.  Their ads tend to show a pretty spectacular picture with only a common name leaving you to guess what it may actually be.  Today's paper from a great midwestern city featured a striking "flowering fern".  Now anyone who knows anything about plants knows that ferns do not flower, but lots of plants have "ferny" leaves, dissected or compound leaves thought by people who never ever look at venation to look like ferns.  So so it is with this plant.  The image is probably Incarvillea delavayi, a member of the bignon family, mostly tropical trees and lianas.  Species of this genus are herbaceous Asian alpine plants, so they are hardy, but in my experience they hate hot summers, and this brings up yet another plant-selling fraud, alpines sold as hardy, i.e., winter hardy, which they are, but very heat intolerant, so not hardy at all in that respect.  Now calling this plant "flowering fern" really sends the wrong message to the botanically naive; many people will just accept that this is indeed a fern.  Nothing in the fine print even hints at its real name.  A better common name, one that has been used for this species, is fern-leafed trumpet flower which correctly suggests a relationship to trumpet vine, Campsis radicans, one of my don't plant this plants.  Other species are sometimes called hardy gloxinias, which implies a wrong family relationship, although bignon flowers do look a lot like some gesneriads.  So someday it will happen.  Some gardener without a clue will ask the Phactor what is the fern that has big pink flowers?  Gad!  And he will answer, "Ferns don't have flowers."  And they will say, "Oh, this one does."   So to play purveyors, if you must use common names, use well accepted ones, and then put the real species name in parentheses after wards, and if you cannot do this, then get out of the business.  To gardeners everywhere, beware the "hardy" alpine scam. 

Not a rock, not a rose

Who needs a rationalization for planting all kinds of different plants? Let the Phytophactor admit to being a plant junkie, to having a certain penchant for strange but wonderful plants. And so while our estate is home to many native species, many exotics grace our gardens as well. Lately the cause of much interest among passersby is a low growing mound of an evergreen shrub covered with cheerful, colorful flowers, and it’s probably just about the only one around as our climate is a bit too cold, so it needs mulching and snow cover to survive our coldest temperatures. So far its luck is holding. This is a member of the rock rose family (Cistaceae), a smallish group more common around Mediterranean climates. This particular shrub is called Helianthemum, which means sunflower, so even scientific names can be a bit confusing and misleading (Helianthus is the other sunflower), but this isn’t one of our native species. Here the name refers to the plant’s habit of only opening its flowers when the sun is shining. Now think how much fun it is when you’ve got a class of plant taxonomy students who are thinking, Cistaceae, no way that shows up on a family ID quiz. Zingo!