The botanical name & its origin

Latin name of hydrangea

The name Hydrangea first appears in 1739 in Flora Virginica, a description of the plants that thrive in the North American state of Virginia. It is derived from the Greek terms hydro = water and angeion. Angeion describes the bowl-shaped flower shape of the hydrangea.

Hippolito Ruiz Lopez and Antonio Pavon y Jiminez collected wild forms of the hydrangea in South America and also described the flowering shrub in 1798. However, they gave the hydrangea the generic name Cornidia, which is no longer in use.

Hydrangeas are conquering German parks

The presumably first hydrangea in Europe was introduced from America in 1736 by Peter Collison. The first cultivated hydrangeas graced around the year 1800 in big buckets, the wonderfully landscaped parks Pillnitz and Weesenstein in Saxony

Origin of the German plant name

According to legend, the botanist Commerson gave the name Hortensia / hydrangea in 1771 in honor of a lady. There are three women who are close to the plant lover:

• Hortense Barré, who accompanied the young botanist on an expedition to America.
• The famous astronomer Hortense Lepaute, wife of a good friend of Commerson's.
• Madame Hortense de Nassau, a daughter of the Prince of Nassau. Her father also went on a scientific trip with Commerson.

All of these explanations for the naming sound very romantic. Most likely, however, the name was simply derived from the Latin term "Hortus" (garden).
In any case, the opinion that the hydrangea was named after a daughter of Empress Josephine is wrong. The girl was born several years after the German naming of the hydrangea.

Well-known species and their botanical names

• Hydrangea mycrophylla (Garden hydrangea, Bauernhortensie), named Hydrogena hortensia by Siebold in 1829 and Hydrangea hortensis by Smith in 1799
• Hydrangea arborescens (snowball hydrangea)
• Hydrangea quercifolia (oak-leaved hydrangea)
• Hydrangea anomala ssp. Petiolaris (climbing hydrangea)
• Hydrangea paniculata ssp. "Grandiflora" (panicle hydrangea)

Tips & Tricks

You can see beautiful collections of blooming hydrangea bushes in Belgium, Holland and England. Almost 800 types of romantic flowering shrubs are currently cultivated in France.