Flower varieties are often named after famous personages – Queen Elisabeth is probably one of the best known. Her is just a selection of others.

Terry Wogan,  King Edward VII, Charlies Angels, Alan Titchmarsh and Charles Unwin all have had Sweet Peas named after them and that is a lot easier to say than Lathyrus Odoratus. So surprise your neighbours with a patch of Terry Wogans or 3 Charlies Angels.

Leucanthemum x superbum ‘Esther Read’  now referred to like many Shasta Daisies just as Esther Read was first grown from a stolen railway embankment as a single daisy crossed with the bigger Chrysanthemum maximum by Horace Read. The Read family were plantsmen for over 200 years but it was in 1931 that this plant of it’s time was exhibited. Now the name is eponymous although the original cultivar is seldom available you may have an Esther Read derivative in your garden.

John Baggensen was brought up in his family nurseries in Cardiff and Pembury Kent before introducing a widely used honeysuckle Lonicera nitada ‘Baggensen’s Gold’. You may well be growing this golden small-leaved plant as a hedge or specimen shrub named after John Baggensen who made very little money out of his introduction cultivated over years from a sport he discovered in the 1940’s. Also introduced by John was the Chamaecyparis lawsoniana ‘Pembury Blue’ which also failed to initially take the horticultural world by storm.

Molly Sanderson from Northern Ireland gave a ‘Viola niger’ plant to a doctor friend This may have been a cross between Viola triclour and Pansy ‘Penny Black’. Dr Stone named the plant after the donor Molly Sanderson and he launched the strain of black Viola that is very popular today.

Another famous female Nora Barlow has the double Aquilegia named after her despite it having been known in botany circles for many years previous. It was a marketing triumph for Blooms of Bressingham to name the plant Aquilegia ‘Nora Barlow’ as Nora was the granddaughter of Charles Darwin.

Nora Barlow’s grandfather in her book about Charles Darwin.

Roses have been named for many different people including the wives of Aaron Ward, Anthony Waterer, Dudley Cross, Fred Danks, Herbert Stevens, John Laing, Norman Watson, and Richard Turnbull. All prefixed with Mrs but ignoring the ladies own names. Not very PC for the garden now a days.

References have been included from ‘Who does your garden grow’ by Alex Pankhurst who gave me the idea for this post.

photo by Twiqa05 on flickr