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Old 21-10-2013, 09:59 PM posted to uk.rec.gardening
David Hill David Hill is offline
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First recorded activity by GardenBanter: May 2012
Posts: 2,947
Default Hebe or Veronica?

I thought it was my age getting me confused yet again.
Lidl are advertising "Choose from Aster, Chrysanthemums or Veronica plants"
But Shrubby veronicas were renamed Hebe before I was born,
I decided to check on line to find out when and came across this:-

Many Kiwi nurserymen and gardeners are puzzled by a recent name change.
Victoria University's Professor Phil Garnock-Jones and his colleagues
argue that none of our native plants should be called Hebe. They say the
name Hebe should be dumped, with the plants reverting to their former
name, Veronica.

That's right. In the early days, New Zealand had about 90 species of
Veronica but, in 1929, botanists Leonard Cockayne and H H Allen
officially renamed them all Hebes and we've called them Hebes ever since.

Now, bringing DNA and cladistic analysis to the picture, our modern
botanists have undone Cockayne and Allen's logic and turned all the
Hebes back into Veronicas again. Some botanists have welcomed the
change, others resist it, others again feel that Hebe is such a nice
name they don't want to lose it.

David @ a wet Swansea Bay