Each year, the National Garden Bureau showcases plants chosen by professionals from within the horticulture industry, who, I assume, are drawn from NGB’s retail and wholesale members. Perennials, annuals and vegetables selected are chosen because they are, according to the bureau’s website, “popular, easy-to-grow, widely adaptable, genetically diverse and versatile.”
This is, of course, a marketing strategy to influence people such as me to write about them so they are on the minds of people such as you as you plan and plant your gardens. This year’s annual selection, for me, is steeped in nostalgia because of its persistent presence in both my parents’ and grandparents’ gardens, so I’m happy to do my bit. Bureau representatives have named 2012 the Year of the Geranium.
Because of a nomenclature snafu that can be attributed to Carl Linnaeus, the father of taxonomy, a truer designation would be Year of the Pelargonium, but that would be lost on most of us. In his “Species Plantarum,” published in 1753, the Swedish botanist placed all geranium and pelargonium species in the Geranium genus because of their similar seeding habits. Within just a few years, a French botanist, Charles Louis L’Héritier de Brutelle, realized the latter should be in a separate genus, but the Pelargonium genus title never caught on.
To read the rest of the story, please go to: Columbia Daily Tribune
