[Fleur Pavlidis]

Please post it, Jorun. Caroline will have no objection at all.

[JTh]

I have now posted the full text in a separate post, Botanical names, see : http://www.mgsforum.org/smf/index.php?topic=1655.msg11495#msg11495 and also attached a link to a separate file for anyone who wants to keep it handy or print it out.

[John J]

I recently saw on a plant label; 'For more information about this plant see www...........' Perhaps this is another way of getting around the expense of producing lots of printed labels or info sheets to attach to individual plants?

[Umbrian]

It could be John but I am quite sceptical about the veracity of a lot of the information available on the web - one never knows the degree of expertise of the provider and all too often vested interests seem to colour the contents. Give me the Forum any day where, with input from the likes of Oron and Alisdair, I can be sure of unbiased information 

[JTh]

Of course, one could get a lot of information from the internet, but it does not help you when you are at the nursery and wonder if this plant would be the right one in the location where you want it, some basic information should be available when choosing and buying a plant..

[Fleur Pavlidis]

Nursery has wi-fi - customer has smart phone? It would follow the new fashion of making the customer do all the work.

[David Dickinson]

Surely the real problem, as I think was pointed out earlier (by Umbrian?), is the lack of a name. With this it would be possible to do research over the internet either there and then or back at home. Without it we need first to get a positive identification from such excellent sources as this forum. A little bit of patience is required but that is okay if it is your local nursery. What if you are miles from home and are never likely to return to the nursery where you saw the plant? A missed sale for the nursery and a missed chance for the gardener.

[John J]

Earlier this year my wife bought a passion flower from a local outlet. The label (see photo below) described it as Passiflora manicata and showed a bright red flower, which would be correct for this plant. When our plant produced a bud she inspected it impatiently every day for signs of opening. So when this morning it had eventually opened and the flower in the second photo was revealed to say she was angry would be an understatement, incandescent would be closer to the mark.
I checked the web-site shown on the label www.perfect-garden.info to find a web page entitled Plant coach and a heading Participating Companies. Only one was listed - Hoogeveen Plants located, as expected, in the Netherlands. Their web-site has a Contact Us section and, once she has calmed down slightly, my wife may just do that. I will try to keep you informed of any developments.

[David Dickinson]

Hi John,

You might be happy that it wasn't P. manicata judging by my disastrous attempts to grow it in Rome! http://www.mgsforum.org/smf/index.php?topic=669.0

Seems that John had a similar experience to yours with mislabelling of P. manicata.

[JTh]

I was at a local nursery last week and I asked the owner why he only used greek names, and not the scientific ones, and I also asked for some labelling instructions. He is very knowledgeable (a university degree in both horticulture and landscape architecture), but he said that none of his customers would understand anything else. He did say, though, that he was planning to set up signs with links to internet databases and allowing customers to use his internet (when he has time...), one can always hope.

[John J]

That sounds good, Jorun, everything has to start somewhere and as you say we can always hope that others will begin to get the message, however slowly.

[Alisdair]

To echo David Dickinson, you may have had a lucky escape! We tried hard to establish P. manicata and one or two other red-flowered or pink-flowered passion flowers (from John Vanderplank, who DID sell the true sorts!) in a sheltered corner in our Greek garden, with absolutely not a glimmer of success.
We saw P. manicata growing well in northern California and think it probably needs life much milder than we could give it. Daisy might be able to grow it well!

[John J]

Several years ago I saw a red-flowered passion flower growing rampantly up the side of a house and over the flat roof of a house in Nicosia. Up there on the central plain it gets hotter in summer and colder in winter than here in Limassol. Unfortunately I wasn't able to see which variety it was. The position we had chosen for our plant was sheltered from direct rays of the sun and from cold winds by a wall and mature trees and was on the edge of a drip line for nearby fruit trees so we thought it might have a good chance of survival.
To continue the saga of the misnamed plant, my wife paid a visit to the nursery and spoke to the owner's wife. Together they looked at other plants received in the same batch from the same supplier. They found Rosa 'Metanoia', an orange-flowered variety, that had bright lemon-yellow flowers and a Lonicera brownii 'Dropmore Scarlet' that had, instead of the scarlet you'd expect, flowers that were tinged with a pale pink. She was assured that an e-mail would be sent to the supplier and she'd be notified of the result by phone. We're not holding our breath.

[JTh]

I wrote about the lack of labelling at a local nursery a year ago; when I came back the other day, it was a big surprise to see that all his plants were labelled with both Greek and scientific names. So sometimes it helps to talk to people. He has not managed to set up the computer system he talked about last year, but this was still a great improvement.


_Z110119 Garden center in Nikiti.jpg by JorunT, on Flickr


_Z110120 .jpg by JorunT, on Flickr

[Hilary]

Jorun,
What a treat to see all the plants properly labelled!