It's quite interesting how certain plant geneses received their names; did the person discovering said plant in the wilds gives it their own name? Was the plant family named after a colleague or a friend or, perhaps, even after a loved one?
Take the plants we call Fuchsias for example: what or who was behind the name? At the last Vallejo Garden Club, I was privileged to hear a talk from Janis and Rodney of the Vallejo Branch (!) of the American Fuchsia Society who not only told the members about how to care, propagate, and just plain enjoy our fuchsia plants at home but the history behind these plants.
Fuchsias have been in cultivation since the 1500s when found in South America and sent to England as part of the great plant explorations of the time. Adventurers were admonished to bring back plant specimens and seeds when they returned home. As a result, fuchsias were brought back as exotic beauties that grew well in Europe.
There are currently 108 species of fuchsias now with over 9000 (!) named cultivars registered with the Fuchsia Society! Originally, the plants had tubed flowers with small sepals, but now hybridizers have created short tubed flowers with 4 petals and longer sepals which usually curved back or a “duplexed” flower which simply means the flowers have many petals (doubles).
What interested me the most, though, was the name “fuchsia”. It turns out that there was a doctor Leonhart Fuchs who was considered to have written the best book on using plants and herbs with medicinal properties. Although other such books had been written earlier, his book emphasized high-quality drawings as the telling way to specify what a plant name stood for and how to identify these plants. Thus he was honored with the species Fuchsia. It was thought for quite some time that he was also honored with the color fuchsia, but the name for the color actually is derived from fuchsine, an early trade name for the dye rosaniline hydrochloride in France by its manufacturer Renard frères et Fane to capitalize on the increasing popularity of the genus fuchsia in fashionable gardens and the fact that both Renard in French and Fuchs in German both mean fox.
Dr. Fuchs created the first medicinal garden at the University of Tubingen under the bidding of Ulrich, Duke of Wurttemberg, Germany in 1533.
If you are interested in belonging to the Vallejo Branch of the American Fuchsia Society, they meet on the 2nd Tuesday, 1 pm, at the Church of the Ascension, 2420 Tuolumne St, Vallejo. If you do go, please be there at 1 promptly as the doors are locked due to a robbery when a group was meeting.