Ursula Buchan does a spot of gardening
If you are an assiduous buyer of plants, you will know that there are quite a number of foreign-bred plants for sale in our nurseries. This has become more obvious in recent years, since the nomenclature rules have changed. These days a plant should be sold under its original name — if it is in a language using Roman script, at least. Penstemon ‘Garnet’, for example, should now be labelled Penstemon ‘Andenken an Friedrich Hahn’. It may not be as snappy, but it is right and proper, since this Penstemon was bred in Germany.
If you are a keen grower of clematis, you will certainly know that there are a number of excellent garden varieties with Polish names: ‘Blekitny Aniol’, ‘Kardynal Wyszynski’, ‘General Sikorski’, ‘Warszawska Nike’, ‘Emilia Plater’, ‘Jan Pawel II’ and ‘Matka Siedliska’, for example.
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