What's That Plant Called?

One of the recent concepts we learned from our focus group is the importance of the name of the plant plays in consumers acceptance. I have two great examples!

The plant that brought this naming issue to light was a perennial in the trial garden called Tradescantia Amethyst Kiss from the fine folks at Conrad Pyle. This is a beautiful blue flowered plant that was selected by one of our focus group participants as her favorite plant. In the discussion about this plant you could hear the difficulty the name was causing this lady. Basically who wants a plant that you can't tell your friend what the name is. 

Tradescantia!

Another example is Scaevola. Scaevola is an under utilized great garden performing plant (see the second picture below at  corner of Oma Avenue and Club V Drive). The common name of Scaevola is "Fan Flower" which describes exactly what the flower looks like as opposed to being named after the 500 BC Roman, Gaius Mucius Scaevola.

The Fan Flower below is a great one newly released by Westhoff called Jewel. It is mainly white with a hint of blue in the flower.

Fan Flower at the Corner of Club V Drive and Oma Avenue in Huntersville

Ps to pronounce Tradescantia it is TRAD-A-SCAN-TEE-A)