Stephanotis floribunda flowering in habitat in southeastern Madagascar.
Photo: © Nivo Rakotonirina from Tropicos
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)
The Madagascar Jasmine is to retain its most well-known botanical name, but has changed its author. Stephanotis floribunda Jacques is the new combination accepted by Kew on their World Checklist of Selected Plant Families and on their Plants of the World Online.
The decision not to change the name to Marsdenia floribunda (C.Morren) Schltr. has come from the latest genetic studies. These studies (and 2022) have shown that Marsdenia and Stephanotis are distinct enough to deserve separate names. Both of these genera are in the tribe Marsdenieae of the Apocynaceae. There has been much discussion among botanists over the last two centuries regarding the exact divisions between the various genera of the Marsdenieae.
The change in author has occurred because I emailed Rafaël Govaerts at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew to point out that there was a publication earlier than the one that previously had been accepted as the earliest publication of the name with a proper description. The new combination has not yet been accepted by the International Plant Names Index, but they take their time over decisions.
UPDATE 14/03/2023: I was checking IPNI for something else and they have accepted the earlier description that I found. I am rather happy about this. They have an entry for Stephanotis floribunda Jacques, Ann. Soc. Hort. Paris 15(Livr. 83): 28 (1834) as well as two other origin dates (1835, 1837). The other two are given as isonyms, meaning they are the same name but not the original. The clincher is that they have used the 1834 version of the name as the basionym for the one they have as the current accepted name: Marsdenia floribunda (Jacques) Schltr., Symb. Antill. (Urban). 1(2): 275 (1899). I am sure they will also accept the resurrection of Stephanotis as a genus very soon, as the authors of the articles on restoring it are the leading authorities on that family of plants.
It might be a little thing for professional botanists who change plant names every day - but it has rather tickled me that I have left a tiny, insignificant alteration in the history of botany. So I decided to write an in-depth history of Stephanotis floribunda. I could not find any article online that did more than give growing tips and mention a few obvious facts about the plant.
There will not be many gardening tips in this piece. I would recommend following the growing advice from the Royal Horticultural Society if you are caring for a Stephanotis. I would also recommend that you don't buy a Stephanotis in mid-winter unless you can guarantee it won't get chilled on the way home or in the post. As I have learnt from my own experience this year.
This is one of my longer articles, this sentence bringing it to over 19,000 words. Chapter headings, linked for your convenience;
Malagasy Common Names
including Latakana ombelahy (first French encounter 1650ish)
Another French encounter (1770)
Third French encounter (1817)
Introduction to Europe
First Pictures
Neumann and Greenhouses
Louisa Lawrence
Edmund Butcher
Rapid popularity in Victorian Britain
Stephanotis floribunda Elvaston variety
Stephanotis floribunda "Polyanthum"?
Stephanotis floribunda "Variegata"
Other Colours and Species
New Species added to Stephanotis in 2022
Flower structure
21st Century
Fragrance
Stephanotic acid
English Common Names
Origin of the botanical name
The Confusion of Marsdenia floribunda
Alternative botanical names
References for names
Malagasy Common Names
Belataky
The name used by the Tanosy tribe in the south-east of Madagascar. They use the crushed leaves against inflammations of the lymph nodes, the swellings being called taky. A specimen of Stephanotis floribunda in the herbarium of the Muséum National de Histoire Naturelle in Paris has Belataky as the common name. It was collected from 42 km (26 miles) north-north-west of Tolañaro in 1956.
Bokabe
Another name used by the Tanosy, meaning very rough. The name was given as Boukabé (or Bokabé on another herbarium sheet) by the plant collector J. Cloisel when he collected it near Tolañaro in the late 19th century.
The name is also used by the Sakalava tribe for the closely-related Marsdenia verrucosa, whose abundant latex was used for adulterating proper rubber latex. Marsdenia verrucosa is also called berabohy, boka, haboka and tsingovio by various tribes, but not the Tanosy.
Latakana ombelahy/Lata Kombilaly/Latac anghomme lahe
The 30 year attempt by France to colonise Madagascar in the 17th century was a miserable time for both the French and the Madagascans. Étienne de Flacourt was invited to take over the military effort at Fort Dauphin and served there from 1648 to 1654. Though he restored order to the troops, the mission to conquer Madagascar was a failure. This gave him some free time to follow his hobbies of botany and zoology. Every naturalist who has visited Madagascar seems to have been overwhelmed by wonder at the strange variety of unique plants and animals to be found there. When de Flacourt was there, the pygmy hippopotamus, elephant bird and giant lemur were still alive.
Among his descriptions of the plants that he encountered was:
Latac anghomme lahe that is to say, bull's testicles such is the resemblance, it is the fruit of a creeper which bears white flowers and which have the smell of Jasmine, but much bigger and in a bunch.In the original French:
Latac anghomme lahe c'est à dire, testiculus tauri d'autant qu'il en a la ressemblance, c'est le fruit d'une rampe qui porte les fleurs blanches et qui ont l'odeur de Jasmin, mais plus grandes et en bouquet.
Stephanotis floribunda unripe fruit in habitat in Madagascar.
About 7-10cm (2¾-4 inches) long.
About 7-10cm (2¾-4 inches) long.
Photo: © Fidy Ratovoson from Tropicos
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)
That name is now usually spelt latakana ombelahy. In 2012, the plant-collector Reza Ludovic noted the local names and uses of Stephanotis grandiflora recounted by informants of the Taisaka and Tanosy tribes. The location was 25 km (15 miles) north-east of Fort Dauphin. The names were Ambironaombilahy (bull fibre-nettle-shrub is the closest I can find to that) and Latakanaombilahy. The plant was used for magic and mystification.
Jean-Marie de La Beaujardiere, the Project Director of the Malagasy Dictionary and Encyclopedia of Madagascar kindly replied to my email and noted that "the Malagasy will not hesitate to name something vaguely resembling a penis with the word lataka". It does not now seem to be used for testicles. Ombilahy does still mean "bull".
The generic name Stephanotis has been used by botanists for various other species, mostly in Asia. These have now all been reallocated to other genera in the Marsdenieae and so are now called by other names. Most became Jasminanthes, named from latinised Arabic and Greek, meaning "jasmine-flower". A few became Marsdenia, named after William Marsden. He had obtained samples of the plant now called Marsdenia tinctoria, used by the locals to make an intense blue dye like indigo. Marsden had realised its potential to be of use to the Empire, though it does not seem to have been used for industrial dye production.
Once the taxonomic smoke clears, there should be only four accepted species of Stephanotis. (See below for updates on that, totally wrong now.) These four species are all found wild in Madagascar and only on the island of Madagascar. These species are: Stephanotis acuminata, Stephanotis floribunda, Stephanotis grandiflora and Stephanotis thouarsii.
Due to the war, it would have been difficult for de Flacourt to have travelled far from Fort Dauphin (now called Tolañaro, Tôlanaro or Taolagnaro) in the far south at 25°S on the east coast. This rules out Stephanotis acuminata as it is not found south of 18°S. The plant could have been any of the other three species.
A specimen of Stephanotis floribunda in the herbarium of the Muséum National de Histoire Naturelle in Paris has Lata Kombilaly as the common name. Though, considering the difficult hand-writing, it is possibly Lata Kombilahy. It was collected from 55 km (34 miles) north-west of Tolañaro in 1958.
However, we do have some surviving fragments of the dried plant collection of de Flacourt's own herbarium. These somehow came into the collection of the Muséum National de Histoire Naturelle in Paris via Sébastien Vaillant. The determination of the last expert to look at the sheet is that the plant labelled Latac anghomme lahe is Stephanotis floribunda. Though that person had scribbled out the last identification quite emphatically, it had previously been determined to be Stephanotis grandiflora.
Whichever species it was, it seems certain that de Flacourt has left us the earliest description by a European and the first herbarium specimen of a Stephanotis.
Vahiboka
A specimen of Stephanotis floribunda in the herbarium of the Muséum National de Histoire Naturelle in Paris has vahiboka as the common name. In Malagasy the word vahy means vine or liana. The word boka is the same as in bokabe, rough.
Vahiganenona
This is the very similar vine Stephanotis grandiflora, in the language of the Taimoro tribe. Vahy means liana or vine, ganenona refers to the bark fibres used in imitation fabrics by little girls. This vine is sometimes used as an ornamental in tropical countries and also has fragrant flowers but is nowhere near as common as Stephanotis floribunda.
Vahi Karabo
A specimen of Stephanotis floribunda in the herbarium of the Muséum National de Histoire Naturelle in Paris has Vahi Karabo as the common name. The plant was collected from 54km (34 miles) north-west of Tolañaro in 1956. The Malagasy Dictionary has karabo as the name of an unidentified vine or two types of tree in the pea family.
Vahimakany
A specimen of Stephanotis grandiflora in the herbarium of the Muséum National de Histoire Naturelle in Paris has Vahimakany as the common name. This may mean "vine of bringing, fetching or taking". It might also be a variation of the name used of several species of vines - vahimiakany, meaning "birdnest-material vine". The plant was collected in the far, far northeast of Madagascar in 1954. Another specimen of Stephanotis grandiflora was collected 290km (180 miles) to the south, which was called Vahimaukany.
They have another specimen of Stephanotis grandiflora from about 50km (30 miles) southwest of that last one, but I can't be sure of the handwriting. It seems to start with Vah and ends with kany, possibly Vahintsaikany. If that is correct it would mean "residue or waste vine".
Vahimatehona
A specimen of Stephanotis grandiflora from 1994 in the herbarium of the Muséum National de Histoire Naturelle in Paris and also in Missouri Botanic Gardens has vahimatehona as the common name. I have no idea what this would mean, mate has many meanings. I would like to think it means "vine of the wedding pond". This collection was made in the extreme north of Madagascar, close to the edge of the Réserve spéciale de Manongarivo.
Vahivoraka
A specimen of Stephanotis floribunda in the herbarium of the Muséum National de Histoire Naturelle in Paris has vahivoraka as the common name. The plant was collected from the Petriky coastal forest 12 km (7½ miles) south-west of Tolañaro. The word vahivoraka has also been used of Phytolacca dodecandra, a tree (not a vine) that is poisonous and purgative. The word voraka has a range of meanings. In light of the properties of the other vahivoraka I believe that in this case it means bowel-loosening. Not in a good way.
Another French encounter
I described the first French description and collection of a dried sample of Stephanotis above, under the common name latakana ombelahy. There was another collection and naming of Stephanotis floribunda specimens in the 18th century, nearly 120 years later. Living material had not been returned to any botanic gardens, as far as we know. I feel compelled to tell a brief version of the full and rather unusual story.
You will probably know of Louis-Antoine Bougainville, if only because he lent his name to the spectacular Bougainvillea that is now common in Mediterranean gardens. As part of a plan to recover some international reputation for France after a disastrous war, Bougainville planned a round-the-world voyage with naturalists and geographers aboard. They left France in 1766 with two ships.
The French doctor and obsessive botanist Philibert Commerson joined Bougainville as a general naturalist after a recommendation from the Paris Academy of Sciences. As the King was willing to pay for a botanical assistant, Commerson brought with him his well-trained and very helpful valet and botanical secretary. The expedition travelled westwards across the Atlantic to Montevideo, around the Straits of Magellan at the southern tip of the Americas and across the Pacific.
The expedition had reached Tahiti before they realised that Commerson's valet was a woman. Different stories disagree, perhaps it was just the captain who was ignorant until Tahiti. Jeanne Baret had been Commerson's housekeeper, nurse and scientific assistant in France and they had a definite attachment to each other. So they had decided she should disguise herself as a man and accompany him on this adventure. Baret and Commerson were then separated by command of Bougainville as women were illegal on board French Navy ships.
When the expedition reached Mauritius in 1768 the pair decided they had endured enough separation and left the ship. Their decision was, no doubt, helped by the fact that the governor of the island and founder of the first botanical garden on Mauritius was an old friend and fellow botanist, Pierre Poivre. Poivre invited them to stay at his home and eat at his table.
A little aside. Pierre Poivre, of course, translates to Peter Pepper in English. Pierre Poivre was known for introducing spice plants to French colonies by organising surreptitious naval expeditions into the Dutch-controlled Spice Islands. These attempts were made from 1752 to to 1772 with little success until local Moluccans were persuaded to help along with French, Filipino, Malay, Spanish and Portuguese agents. The spice trade was the biggest earner in international trade at the time and the Dutch East India Company controlled the most valuable spices - clove and nutmeg.
Pierre Poivre was almost certainly the inspiration behind the nursery rhyme/tongue twister about Peter Piper picking a peck of pickled pepper, which first surfaced in 1813.
Commerson and Baret continued their botanical partnership while based at Mauritius. They collected specimens from that island as well as Île Bourbon and Madagascar.
Just in case you have forgotten during this tale of exotic adventure, slavery was still common in all European territories and the foundation of their economies. One black slave-child from Mozambique helped them by journeying far into the hinterland and bringing back new plants they had never seen before. Commerson had bought the child, having been reminded of his own son who was a similar age, with the intention that the child would eventually "forget forever that he was a slave". The final fate of that child is unknown.
Just in case you have forgotten during this tale of exotic adventure, slavery was still common in all European territories and the foundation of their economies. One black slave-child from Mozambique helped them by journeying far into the hinterland and bringing back new plants they had never seen before. Commerson had bought the child, having been reminded of his own son who was a similar age, with the intention that the child would eventually "forget forever that he was a slave". The final fate of that child is unknown.
They had travelled to Madagascar in 1770 arriving in October and returned in December. They collected specimens of Stephanotis floribunda on that visit among many species new to them. They then spent most of 1771 on Île Bourbon.
On their return Commerson wrote of his delight at the strangeness of the plants and animals of Madagascar:
What an admirable country is Madagascar! It alone deserves, not a traveling observer, but entire academies. I can announce to naturalists that it is in Madagascar that is the real promised land for them; this is where nature seems to have withdrawn as in a particular sanctuary, to work there on models other than those to which it was enslaved elsewhere: the most unusual, the most marvelous forms, are met there at every step.
In the original French:
Quel admirable pays que Madagascar ! Il mériterait à lui seul, non pas un observateur ambulant, mais des académies entières. C'est à Madagascar que je puis annoncer aux naturalistes qu'est la véritable terre de promission pour eux ; c'est là que la nature semble s'être retirée comme dans un sanctuaire particulier, pour y travailler sur d'autres modèles que ceux auxquels elle s'est asservie ailleurs : les formes les plus insolites, les plus merveilleuses, s'y rencontrent à chaque pas.
Poivre was recalled to Paris in October 1772 and the new governor was not well-disposed to Commerson. Tragically, Commerson died on Mauritius in 1773 at the age of 46, before he could write up his findings and get them published.
The French Navy collected his 32 chests, containing manuscripts and 30,000 plant specimens, and delivered them to the royal botanic garden in Paris. One of the herbarium sheets for Stephanotis floribunda collected by Commerson in 1770 can still be found in the herbarium of the Muséum National de Histoire Naturelle in Paris and another at Kew Gardens.
Jeanne Baret stayed on Mauritius for a year or so. She ran a tavern to pay for living expenses. She met a French army officer, married him and returned to France. She successfully took legal action to get the inheritance she was due from Commerson's will. Later, Baret was also granted a pension of 200 livres per year by the Ministère de la Marine. The document apparently includes some high praise for her contributions:
Jeanne Barré, by means of a disguise, circumnavigated the globe on one of the vessels commanded by M. de Bougainville. She devoted herself in particular to assisting M. de Commerson, doctor and botanist, and shared with great courage the labours and dangers of this savant. Her behaviour was exemplary and M. de Bougainville refers to it with all due credit.... His Lordship has been gracious enough to grant to this extraordinary woman a pension of two hundred livres a year to be drawn from the fund for invalid servicemen and this pension shall be payable from 1 January 1785.
It is not recorded whether Baret had trouble getting paid during the 22 years of French political disturbances that followed, until she died at the age of 67 in 1807.
Commerson's huge collection of manuscripts and plant specimens were then, as Commerson had asked just before he died, under the care of Antoine-Laurent Jussieu. Jussieu slowly worked his way through the huge collection and published many of the plants with the names and descriptions provided by Commerson. In 1813, 43 years after it was collected, Jussieu finally got Commerson's description of the plant published as Isaura allicia with Commerson as the author. Unfortunately, the genus Stephanotis had already been published and took priority, though no species of Stephanotis had been described yet.
There is a specimen now identified as Stephanotis acuminata from the herbarium of Pierre Poivre in the Muséum National de Histoire Naturelle in Paris. This was presumably also collected by Commerson's expedition in 1770.
There is a specimen now identified as Stephanotis acuminata from the herbarium of Pierre Poivre in the Muséum National de Histoire Naturelle in Paris. This was presumably also collected by Commerson's expedition in 1770.
Third French encounter
Jean Nicolas Bréon spent more than a year plant-collecting on the east coast of Madagascar from 1817 to 1818. Unfortunately, he also picked up a tropical fever that stayed with him for many years. Some areas of Madagascar were notorious for lethal fevers at some times of the year.
This fever was almost certainly malaria, which had plagued the French army in its efforts to conquer Madagascar. The French were very slow and reluctant in adopting the use of quinine against malaria, despite French scientists being instrumental in its development. Even in 1895 a French expedition in Madagascar lost 5,592 lives out of a force of 21,600 men. Only 20 died from wounds received in action. Two French botanists had famously died in Madagascar of malaria, André Michaux in 1802 and Louis Armand Chapelier in 1806. A French dictionary from 1883 demonstrated the use of the word "colony" with the phrase "He died in the colonies".
This fever was almost certainly malaria, which had plagued the French army in its efforts to conquer Madagascar. The French were very slow and reluctant in adopting the use of quinine against malaria, despite French scientists being instrumental in its development. Even in 1895 a French expedition in Madagascar lost 5,592 lives out of a force of 21,600 men. Only 20 died from wounds received in action. Two French botanists had famously died in Madagascar of malaria, André Michaux in 1802 and Louis Armand Chapelier in 1806. A French dictionary from 1883 demonstrated the use of the word "colony" with the phrase "He died in the colonies".
As well as collecting many economically useful plants such as types of Arabian coffee and sugar-cane, Bréon also introduced the Bourbon Rose to Europe in 1819. After his plant-collecting trip to Madagascar he was given control of the botanic gardens on Île Bourbon.
Bréon included the Madagascar jasmine as Asclepias odoradisima in his Catalogue des plantes cultivées aux jardins botanique et de naturalisation de l'ile Bourbon of 1820. In the 1825 edition he had corrected the name to the good Latin Asclepias odoratissima, the most fragrant milkweed. The word odorata means fragrant in ancient Latin. The -issima suffix is an extreme intensifier, as can still be seen in carisima in modern Spanish and carissima in modern Italian (as darling as can be). So odoratissima means the plant is as fragrant as fragrant can be.
Bréon's abbreviated notes in the Catalogue simply record that Asclepias odoratissima was:
Asclépiade... ...odorante Madagascar. orn[ement]. L[igneux - woody]. J. B.[cultivated at the Jardin Botanique]
Bréon had collected herbarium samples of the very similar species Stephanotis grandiflora during his visit to Madagascar. Despite its close resemblance to Stephanotis floribunda, he mistook it for a Lisianthus. Lisianthus or Lisianthius are members of the gentian family. Some do have jasmine-shaped flowers, such as Lisianthius auratus and Lisianthius seemanii.
A young botanical student called Joseph-Henri-Francois Neumann spent three years from 1821 to 1824 working at the botanic garden on Réunion with Bréon.
Introduction to Europe
When Jean Nicolas Bréon returned to Paris in 1832 (or 1833?) he brought many more new plants with him, including Stephanotis floribunda. There is a dried, pressed herbarium specimen of Stephanotis floribunda from Bréon dated 1834 in the Herbarium of the Muséum National de Histoire Naturelle in Paris.
I could only find one definite reference to Bréon actually having collected the living material in Madagascar rather than just bringing it from the botanical garden on Île Bourbon. In 1839, Neumann wrote:
The first description of the flowering plant was written by Henri-Antoine Jacques and published in the July 1834 edition of the Annales de la Société d'Horticulture de Paris:
Jacques had been a founder member of the Société d'Horticulture de Paris in 1827. At that time he was head Gardener to the Duc d'Orléans. The Duc renounced that title in 1830 to become Louis Philippe I, King of the French - until his forced retirement to England in 1848.
Louis Philippe had an ardent interest in plants. As he was from a junior branch of the Bourbon family, he had been delighted by the arrival of the Bourbon rose. Bréon had sent seeds of a variety known as Rose Edouard to Jacques from the Île Bourbon in 1819. Jacques became famous for the varieties of Bourbon rose that he bred for the King's gardens. He named one of his Bourbon roses Neumann, after his fellow gardener.
When Jacques died at the age of 84 in 1866, it was remarked that even in advanced old age he had occupied himself with horticulture and writing articles on rare or new plants that he had seen.
On page xx of Le Bon Jardinier, Almanach pour L'Année 1835, in a list of Additions and Corrections, there is a brief description with the wrong page number. On page 653 we can read the full description.
It is possible that it was Neumann himself who wrote this description of Stephanotis floribunda but it does seem to just be an abridged version of the first description by Jacques. Neumann was involved with the founding of Le Bon Jardinier, Revue Horticole and Annales de Flore et de Pomone. He contributed many articles to them. All three journals featured Stephanotis floribunda in their issues for 1835 or 1836. Later, he also helped found L'Horticulteur Universel, which featured Stephanotis in its first volume in 1839. However, Henri-Antoine Jacques was also involved with all those publications.
The original description from Annales de la Société d'Horticulture de Paris was republished in Revue Horticole in January 1835, another publication by the same Parisian publisher of Le Bon Jardinier, Audot. Though the same edition also credited a publisher in Brussels, Périchon.
The simpler description from Le Bon Jardinier was republished with minor changes for the January/February 1835 issue of a Belgian journal, Horticulteur Belge, journal des Jardiniers et Amateurs. Though also published in Brussels, this had a different publisher, Stapleaux.
First Pictures
A differently-worded and much longer botanical description, this time attributed to Neumann himself, appeared in July 1836 in Annales de Flore et de Pomone with a colour plate. This may be the first published illustration of the plant. Though we have printed evidence to the contrary, Neumann appears to write that the plant first flowered in their glasshouses in 1835. That must be a typo.
The abbreviation "sc." stands for sculptit, meaning somebody called Lanvin prepared the plates for printing by carving them. Throughout the volume, the only credit on 46 of the 48 colour plates is "Lanvin", "Lanvin sc." and one case of "Lanvin s p." The exception is for plate 43-44, the spectacular Amherstia nobilis. Madame Prevost had pinxit (painted) and Lanvin had sculptit for that plate.
The artwork is consistent for all the colour plates in the Annales for that year, so I assume that Lanvin had sculptit and pinxit for all of them. I can find no other information about a botanical illustrator called Lanvin. Though my difficulty might have been due to the popularity of the fashion designer Jeanne Lanvin in the late 19th century and early 20th century, who did some botanical print fabrics. The only other plate by Lanvin that I could find had a painter credited as well: C Vauthier pinxit. I suppose Lanvin didn't have time to get out of the greenhouse much, as he was doing 48 full colour botanical illustrations for the Annales de Flore et de Pomone from 1835 until 1840.
The more famous publication of the name Stephanotis floribunda, that was regarded as the original for many years, was in 1837. Adolphe Brongniart had based his description on the live plant he had seen in the botanical garden at Paris. The herbarium of the Muséum National de Histoire Naturelle in Paris has a pressed, dried specimen of that very plant, collected by Brongniart when Neumann flowered it in 1834.
A young botanical student called Joseph-Henri-Francois Neumann spent three years from 1821 to 1824 working at the botanic garden on Réunion with Bréon.
When Jean Nicolas Bréon returned to Paris in 1832 (or 1833?) he brought many more new plants with him, including Stephanotis floribunda. There is a dried, pressed herbarium specimen of Stephanotis floribunda from Bréon dated 1834 in the Herbarium of the Muséum National de Histoire Naturelle in Paris.
I could only find one definite reference to Bréon actually having collected the living material in Madagascar rather than just bringing it from the botanical garden on Île Bourbon. In 1839, Neumann wrote:
It is to Mr. Bréon, seed merchant/florist, Mégisserie dock, in Paris, that we owe the introduction to France of this plant; it was he who, after having brought it from Madagascar to Bourbon, cultivated it successfully in that colony, from where he brought it to us when he returned to France in 1832, with other plants no less interesting.In the original French:
C'est à M. Bréon, marchand grainier fleuriste, quai de la Mégisserie, à Paris, que nous devons l'introduction en France de cette plante ; c'est lui qui, après l'avoir fait venir de Madagascar à Bourbon, l'a cultivée avec succès dans cette colonie, d'où il nous l'a apportée lors de son retour en France en 1832, avec d'autres plantes non moins interessantes.On arriving back in Paris, Bréon had bought a nursery, seed merchant and florist business. It thrived for some years but after the death of his wife and son he moved to Noyon, in the north of France. He kept his new wife and son on his naval pension and the proceeds of a tobacco shop.
Stephanotis floribunda ripe seed pod in habitat in Madagascar.
Showing the downy seed spread by wind, characteristic of the asclepiads.
The ripe or dry fruit may have an odour of mushrooms.
The ripe or dry fruit may have an odour of mushrooms.
Photo: © Fidy Ratovoson from Tropicos
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)
Once the living Stephanotis floribunda was received at the Jardin du Roi in Paris it came under the care of the "greatly modest and habitually benevolent" J-H-F Neumann, now promoted to being the boss of the temperate glasshouses. Neumann's experience on the island of Réunion with Bréon was invaluable for assessing the conditions that the plants would need to thrive. In June 1834 Neumann coaxed the Stephanotis to bloom for the first time in Europe.Stephanotis floribunda, H. P. [Not Published?] (Apocynaceae family.)
This plant, splendid for its flower, has the bearing of Hoya carnosa; it also has a woody stem, twining and flexible, and like it allows itself to form garlands of great length. The leaves are opposite, stalked, oval, leathery, thick, 3 inches long; the flowers are born in stalked umbels in the axils [armpits] of the leaves on the shoots of the previous year, and current shoots; each umbel is made up of six to seven pure white flowers, tubular, emitting a Tuberose fragrance and staying strong for the lengthy blooming; the tube is funnel-shaped, as big as the little finger; 18 lines long, surmounted by a flat lamina, 18 to 20 lines wide, divided into 5 oval lobes.In the original French:
We saw this beautiful plant in flower, during the course of June just past, in the warm glasshouse entrusted to the care of Mr. Neumann, in the Garden of the King.
Stephanotis floribunda, H. P. [Perhaps Hors Publi? Meaning "unpublished".] (Famille des Apocinées.)
Cette plante, magnifique par sa fleur, a le port de l'Hoya carnosa ; elle en a aussi la tige ligneuse, volubile et flexible, et se prête comme elle à former des guirlandes d'une grande longueur. Les feuilles sont opposées, pétiolées, ovales, coriaces, épaisses, longues de 3 pouces ; les fleurs naissent en ombelles pédonculées dans les aiselles des feuilles, des pousses de l'année précédente, et de pousses actuelles ; chaque ombelle est composée de six à sept fleurs d'un blanc pur, tubuleuses, répandant une odeur de Tubereuse et restant fort long-temps épanouies ; le tube est infundibuliforme, gros comme le petit doigt, long de 18 lignes, surmonté d'un limbe plane large de 18 à 20 lignes, divisé en 5 lobes ovales.The French pouce was about 6.6% longer than the British inch. The British "line" was one twelfth of an inch (one quarter of a barleycorn), just as the French ligne was one twelfth of a pouce.
On voyait cette belle plante en fleurs, pendant le conrant [courant] de juin dernier, dans la serre chaude confiée aux soins de M. Neumann, au Jardin du Roi.
Jacques had been a founder member of the Société d'Horticulture de Paris in 1827. At that time he was head Gardener to the Duc d'Orléans. The Duc renounced that title in 1830 to become Louis Philippe I, King of the French - until his forced retirement to England in 1848.
Louis Philippe had an ardent interest in plants. As he was from a junior branch of the Bourbon family, he had been delighted by the arrival of the Bourbon rose. Bréon had sent seeds of a variety known as Rose Edouard to Jacques from the Île Bourbon in 1819. Jacques became famous for the varieties of Bourbon rose that he bred for the King's gardens. He named one of his Bourbon roses Neumann, after his fellow gardener.
When Jacques died at the age of 84 in 1866, it was remarked that even in advanced old age he had occupied himself with horticulture and writing articles on rare or new plants that he had seen.
Stephanotis floribunda, pag. 634. Very beautiful flower with a delicious odour.
STEPHANOTE FLORIBOND. Stephanotis floribunda. There is, grown under this name, in the king's garden, a woody plant, twining, slender, but becoming very long, and whose leaves are opposite, stalked, oval, leathery, thick, sharp-pointed and 3 inches long; the flowers are born in an axillary umbel; they are a beautiful white, tubular, 18 lines [1½ inches, 4cm] long, with a flat five-lobed lamina 20 lines [1⅔ inches, 4.5cm] wide. They last a long time and emit a fragrance of tuberose. Warm glasshouse. Propagated by cuttings.In the original French:
Stephanotis floribunda, pag. 634. Très-belle fleur d'une odeur délicieuse.
STEPHANOTE FLORIBOND. Stephanotis floribunda. On cultive sous ce nom, au jardin du roi, une plante ligneuse, volubile, grêle, mais devenant fort longue, et dont les feuilles sont opposées, pétiolées, ovales, coriaces, épaisses, mucronées et longues de 3 pouces ; les fleurs naissent en ombelle axillaire ; elles sont d'un beau blanc, tubuleuses, longues de 18 lignes, à limbe plane quinquelobé, et large de 20 lignes. Elles durent long-temps et répandent une odeur de tubereuse. Serre chaude. Multiplic. de bouture.Le Bon Jardinier for 1835 appears to have been printed sometime between the last meeting of the Société d'Horticulture de Paris in 1834 on the 17th of December and their first meeting of 1835 on the 7th of January. It was an "Almanach" so needed to be available before the year started, though few people would have been in the garden on the first of January.
It is possible that it was Neumann himself who wrote this description of Stephanotis floribunda but it does seem to just be an abridged version of the first description by Jacques. Neumann was involved with the founding of Le Bon Jardinier, Revue Horticole and Annales de Flore et de Pomone. He contributed many articles to them. All three journals featured Stephanotis floribunda in their issues for 1835 or 1836. Later, he also helped found L'Horticulteur Universel, which featured Stephanotis in its first volume in 1839. However, Henri-Antoine Jacques was also involved with all those publications.
The original description from Annales de la Société d'Horticulture de Paris was republished in Revue Horticole in January 1835, another publication by the same Parisian publisher of Le Bon Jardinier, Audot. Though the same edition also credited a publisher in Brussels, Périchon.
The simpler description from Le Bon Jardinier was republished with minor changes for the January/February 1835 issue of a Belgian journal, Horticulteur Belge, journal des Jardiniers et Amateurs. Though also published in Brussels, this had a different publisher, Stapleaux.
A differently-worded and much longer botanical description, this time attributed to Neumann himself, appeared in July 1836 in Annales de Flore et de Pomone with a colour plate. This may be the first published illustration of the plant. Though we have printed evidence to the contrary, Neumann appears to write that the plant first flowered in their glasshouses in 1835. That must be a typo.
Stephanotide à fleurs nombreuse, the stephanotis with lots of flowers.
Annales de Flore et de Pomone (1836)
From Biodiversity Heritage Library.
From Biodiversity Heritage Library.
The abbreviation "sc." stands for sculptit, meaning somebody called Lanvin prepared the plates for printing by carving them. Throughout the volume, the only credit on 46 of the 48 colour plates is "Lanvin", "Lanvin sc." and one case of "Lanvin s p." The exception is for plate 43-44, the spectacular Amherstia nobilis. Madame Prevost had pinxit (painted) and Lanvin had sculptit for that plate.
The artwork is consistent for all the colour plates in the Annales for that year, so I assume that Lanvin had sculptit and pinxit for all of them. I can find no other information about a botanical illustrator called Lanvin. Though my difficulty might have been due to the popularity of the fashion designer Jeanne Lanvin in the late 19th century and early 20th century, who did some botanical print fabrics. The only other plate by Lanvin that I could find had a painter credited as well: C Vauthier pinxit. I suppose Lanvin didn't have time to get out of the greenhouse much, as he was doing 48 full colour botanical illustrations for the Annales de Flore et de Pomone from 1835 until 1840.
The more famous publication of the name Stephanotis floribunda, that was regarded as the original for many years, was in 1837. Adolphe Brongniart had based his description on the live plant he had seen in the botanical garden at Paris. The herbarium of the Muséum National de Histoire Naturelle in Paris has a pressed, dried specimen of that very plant, collected by Brongniart when Neumann flowered it in 1834.
In 1839, Neumann contributed a description of his cultivation and propagation methods for the plant in L'Horticulteur Universel. He also wrote:
This one [volume of soil], however, still has enough heat [energy from fertiliser?] to make this plant vegetate beautifully, to the point that on a cordon about 18 to 20 feet long, we have seen this year the production of more than 200 bunches of flowers (the figure opposite offers an exact resemblance), which embalmed our ancient greenhouses for all their duration...In the original French:
... In fact, of a twining plant, I do not think that one could find one more pleasant.
Celle-ci, cedependant , possède encore assez de chaleur pour faire végéter admirablement cette plante, au point que sur un cordon de 18 à 20 pieds de long environ , on l'a vue cette année produire plus de 200 ombelles de fleurs (dont la figure ci-contre offre une exacte ressemblance), qui embaumaient nos anciennes serres dans tous leur longeur...The use of the word "embalming" may seem strange in these days when embalming of the dead is done with organic poisons and heavy metals. At that time embalming would have been more associated with fragrant herbs and resins. The French word embaumer also meant "to perfume, to scent". The OED has not updated their entry since 1891. Their definition of the verb "embalm" is "To impregnate (a dead body) with spices, to preserve it from decay." They also have the definition "To endue with balmy fragrance."
... En fait de plante volubile , je ne crois pas que l'on en puisse trouver de plus agréable.
Stephanotis floribunda from Herbier Général de l'Amateur,
The plate is in much better condition than the same picture from
L'Horticulteur Universel, etc. Tome 1er (1839)
mentioned in the quote above as "the figure opposite".
mentioned in the quote above as "the figure opposite".
Neumann ventured to Britain in 1835 and again in 1842 to spend time at the extensive glasshouses and gardens of William Cavendish, the sixth Duke of Devonshire. Neumann described the 4,000 square metre Great Conservatory at Chatsworth, reaching 20 metres tall at its highest point, as a "vegetal palace". Neumann was also very touched by the friendly hospitality of Cavendish and his head gardener/architect Joseph Paxton. Neumann returned from Britain with many plants that were previously unknown in France.
Cavendish and Paxton are most famous for cultivating a banana that went on to become the currently universal industrial banana variety, called the Cavendish. One of Neumann's sons went on to study at Kew Gardens, as well as in Scotland and Ireland.
Neumann (who seemed to ignore his first name when writing) was not just a practical gardener but wrote many technical articles and books. In 1846 the second edition of his book Art de Construire et de Gouverner les Serres on the art of construction and management of glasshouses was published, after the first edition in 1844. He covered every aspect of greenhouse management, from ensuring the water stayed fresh by keeping fish in the water barrels to avoiding poisoning yourself with the more deadly plants.
Glasshouses at the Jardin du Roi, now called
Muséum National de Histoire Naturelle. Drawings by Neumann.
Art de Construire et de Gouverner les Serres (1846, Paris)
Muséum National de Histoire Naturelle. Drawings by Neumann.
Art de Construire et de Gouverner les Serres (1846, Paris)
Neumann's designs for 42-44: hot glasshouses,
45-46: orchid glasshouses, 47: aquarium.
45-46: orchid glasshouses, 47: aquarium.
Art de Construire et de Gouverner les Serres (1846, Paris)
The Proceedings of the Horticultural Society of London recorded 3044 visitors not including exhibitors having attended the Exhibition at the Garden at Turnham Green on the 18th of May 1839. It does not record that Stephanotis was shown at that exhibition. However, it does mention some medals being awarded:
To Mr. Butcher, Gardener to Mrs. Lawrence, F.H.S., for a large collection of Stove and Greenhouse plants.Louisa Lawrence (née Senior) was a famous horticulturalist and enthusiastic grower of orchids and other exotics. Mrs Lawrence became the first female Fellow of the Horticultural Society of London, hence the F.H.S. after her name. She managed this feat in 1830 at, perhaps, the age of 27, though she was cagey about her actual age. She and her gardeners were frequent exhibitors and medal-winners at shows and flower-fêtes. She grew many novel collections of plants from around the world. She was one of many who competed to be the first to produce flowers on new introductions.
To Mr. Butcher, Gardener to Mrs. Lawrence, F.H.S., for Cape Heaths.
To Mr. Butcher, Gardener to Mrs. Lawrence, F.H.S., for Thunbergia Hawtayneana.
Though other newspapers had reports on the London Horticultural Society exhibition at Turnham-green in Chiswick that took place on the 18th of May 1839, the first to mention Stephanotis was Bell's Weekly Messenger on Saturday the 25th of May 1839:
... Dillwynnia glycenifolia, which was a perfect beauty; Thunbergia Hautoniana, a new blue flowering stove climber ; and Stephanotis floribunda, a new stove climber, producing spikes of lovely white flowers, delicately scented, which were among the principal objects of attraction to the brilliant assemblage which attended the exhibition.In its edition for June 1839 (No. XXXVII), The Floricultural Magazine, and Miscellany of Gardening commented on the showing of Stephanotis floribunda:
Stephanotis floribunda.—A stove climber from the East Indies in foliage and habit somewhat resembling Physianthus undulatus [now Araujia hortorum or Araujia sericifera?]. It produces spikes of elegant pure white flowers, which possess a very agreeable fragrance.Joseph Paxton, the gardener of the Duke of Devonshire, was one of Mrs Lawrence's competitors in the race to flower exotic plant introductions. Paxton was said to dislike Mrs Lawrence. The sixth volume of Paxton's Magazine of Botany was printed at the very end of 1839. Paxton's preface was dated the 20th of December 1839. Paxton noted:
Thunbergia Hawtayneana.— ...
...A splendid plant of this lovely climber, as also of the Stephanotis floribunda, was exhibited, for the first time in public, by Mrs. Lawrence, of Drayton Green, at the recent exhibition of the Horticultural Society, at Turnham Green. And we confess that seldom have we been more surprised or delighted with any plant than with T. Hawtayneana.
STEPHANÒTUS FLORIBÚNDUS A specimen of this highly valuable stove-plant is now exhibiting its fine white blossoms, and exhaling its delightful odour, in the stove of Mr. Knight['s nursery, King's Road], Chelsea. ... ...It appears to be a most vigorous flowering plant, and both for its ornamental character and fragrance, is entitled to very general attention.Though he may have found her irritating, Paxton did give Mrs. Lawrence the credit she was due. She allowed artists for William Hooker, John Lindley and Joseph Paxton to visit and depict the plants that she coaxed into flower, to be published in their journals and books. In the same volume Paxton featured Thunbergia hawtayneana (in the acanthus family, Acanthaceae, according to some botanists this is now Meyenia hawtayneana), which Mrs Lawrence had shown at the Royal Horticultural Society at the same Exhibition as Stephanotis floribunda.
We owe our permission to publish a figure of this very splendid species to the courteousness of Mrs. Lawrence, Drayton Green, Middlesex, in whose select and valuable collection,—comprising such numbers of the choicest plants, and in which so many rare specimens are cultivated with marked success, frequently blossoming before they fall into the possession of scarcely any other amateur,—it developed its showy flowers early in the month of June last.
... ...
Dr Wallich, superintendent of the Calcutta botanic garden, has sent plants of this species, which were collected in Nepal, to several British gardens ; and Messrs. Rollison of Tooting have had it in their possession for two or three years. Mrs. Lawrence's specimen is, however, the first, indeed we believe the only one, that has flowered in this country.
Thunbergia hawtayneana from Paxton's Magazine of Botany
(Orr & Co., London, 1839) Vol 6: 147
John Claudius Loudon heaped praise on Mrs Lawrence's garden at Drayton Green in the The Gardener's Magazine in 1833 and again in 1834. It might interest organic gardeners that Mrs Lawrence controlled insects on her yellow rose-bush by "washing it abundantly with soapsuds".
When JC Loudon visited again in 1838, Mrs Lawrence had won 53 medals at Horticultural Society shows in the five years since her first medal in 1833. Loudon also discovered from her records that Mrs Lawrence had 340 species or varieties of hot-house plants among the thousands of varieties of plants in her garden.
A greenhouse in the grounds of the villa of Mrs. Lawrence, at Drayton Green.
Gardener's Magazine (1838) 14: 305-322
Louisa Senior had married William Lawrence on the 14th of August 1828. The next December, her father won a prize of £20 at the Smithfield Club's 30th Annual Adjudication of Prizes to Fat Cattle for his 5 year and 6 month old Hereford Ox.
Mrs Lawrence's husband bought a new, larger house in Ealing Park in 1838. It seems likely that it took a while to sort out the stovehouses before Mrs Lawrence moved her precious plants to their new quarters. She was still being credited as Mrs Lawrence, Drayton Green until 1840. Except in the report in the London Sun that Mrs Lawrence had been delivered of a daughter at Ealing Park on the 1st of November 1839.
The Atlas reported on Saturday 19 June 1841 on the extensive gardens and greenhouses of Mrs Lawrence of Ealing Park. Among the lists of plants in the glasshouses was a Stephanotis floribunda. Ealing Park was the fashionable garden to visit and among others was seen by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, all the ministers of the Robert Peel government at one party, the King of the Belgians and the Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz.
There is a painting reproduced on the Wikipedia page for Louisa Lawrence. Unfortunately, there is no attribution nor any details about the origin of the painting. I can't find any proof that it is Louisa Lawrence so I have not reproduced it here. One could imagine from her expression that the pretty woman in the painting is patiently enduring the need to sit still for a portrait when she has far more interesting things she could be doing in the garden.
Lawrence's friend Jane Loudon† wrote a popular introduction to gardening called The Ladies' Companion to the Flower Garden in 1841. It was dedicated to Mrs Lawrence by its author, as
A warm patron of floriculture,
an excellent botanist, and, above all, as one of the first
lady-gardeners of the present day...
Mrs Lawrence auctioned off many of her plants in 1854 due to ill-health. This was the year before her death on the 14th of August 1855, her 27th wedding anniversary. She was survived by her husband, a son and two daughters. Her son Trevor became President of the Royal Horticultural Society in 1885 and shared her fanatical interest in orchids.
After her death the remaining plants were auctioned in September. She had kept a Stephanotis floribunda, which fetched £2 2s at the auction. That is a lot of money - it would, apparently, pay the wages of a skilled worker for 10 days in 1855. Many of the orchids fetched much higher prices.
† I had to resist digressing on Jane Loudon, writer of a popular, predictive, proto-feminist science fiction novel - The Mummy!: Or a Tale of the Twenty-Second Century.
Edmund Butcher
Gardener's house at Mrs. Lawrence's villa in Drayton Green in 1838
with floor plan of house, stove house and orchid house.
Gardener's Magazine (1838) 14: 305-322
b, Entrance. g, Apartment divided into two bedrooms.
d, Kitchen. h, Stove, heated by hot water.
e, Wash-house, or back kitchen. i, Orchidaceous house.
f, Sitting-room. m, Children's gardens.
The floor-plan above shows that the gardener's house was about 50ft by 15ft (15m by 4.5m). The stove-house and orchid house were each about the same size as the gardener's house at 750ft² (70m²). This is my dream house, if it came with a few acres of garden.
The previous head gardener for Mrs Lawrence had been a Mr Cornelius who served from before October 1833 to at least the 9th of May 1835. Mr. Edmund Butcher served as Mrs Lawrence's gardener from before the 9th of July 1836, when he exhibited "stove and green-house plants (large collection)". The Gardener's Chronicle published a letter from Butcher describing the heating system for the greenhouses at Ealing Park on the 16th of January 1841. The last mention of Mr Butcher with Mrs Lawrence in the Royal Horticultural Society lists was on the 10th of July 1841 when he again showed a large collection of stove and greenhouse plants and won a Gold Knightian Medal for them. He also showed twenty species of Cape Heaths, two collections of six and three species of Orchidaceous plants, and the single exotic plants Cuphea melvilla and Lemonia spectabilis.
The next entries for Mrs Lawrence were on the 20th of July 1841, with no gardener credited. She won a Silver Banksian Medal. Butcher was later succeeded by Joseph Goode from the 1st of March 1842 until the 1st of August 1843 and then John Robertson from the 5th of September 1843 to at least the 7th of April 1846.
"Edmund Butcher, late Gardener at Ealing Park" placed an advert to obtain a new situation in The Gardener's Chronicle on Saturday the 26th of February 1842. Unlike the other adverts for a situation he put his name first and did not suggest that potential employers could contact his previous employer for a recommendation. Instead he:
begs respectfully to refer any Nobleman or Gentleman requiring the services of a GARDENER, to the various Exhibitions of Flowers, &c, at the Horticultural Society of London, where he has obtained many Prizes for Plants exhibited there during the last five years.The issue of The Gardener's Chronicle on the 1st of October 1842 mentions a "Mr. E. Butcher, gardener to the Earl of Jersey" contributing 10s to the collection for the widow and children of a recently-deceased gardener. His employer was, presumably, George Child Villiers, 5th Earl of Jersey.
The Bicester Herald on Saturday the 11th of October 1856 carried a notice that John Soden the elder was retiring from the Grove Nursery in Middle Barton. He was to be succeeded by John Soden the younger and Edmund Butcher. A notice was published in Jackson's Oxford Journal on Saturday 19 September 1857 that the partnership between John Soden the younger and Edmund Butcher of the Grove Nursery, Middle Barton, Oxfordshire was dissolved. Middle Barton was about 9 km (5½ miles) from the Earl of Jersey's home at Middleton Park. Many employers allowed their gardeners to have a nursery business on the side. Presumably there was a lot of spare propagation material from the gardens that could just be potted up and sold by the nursery workers.
A testimonial in an advert for Page's Blight Composition on the 4th of May 1861 in The Gardener's Chronicle implies that Butcher was still working for the Earl of Jersey, at Middleton Park near Bicester in Oxfordshire. If he was, he would have been working for the 16 year old 7th Earl who had succeeded to the earldom in 1859 on the death of his father and grandfather in that year.
Rapid popularity in Victorian Britain
Within five years of its first flowering in France in 1834 Stephanotis floribunda was being produced by florists there to meet the demand from plant lovers across Europe. In 1839 French nurseries were having difficulty keeping up with the demand from Britain, barely potting plants up before sending them out. Old and rich aristocratic families had many glasshouses but the newly-rich industrialists in Britain had caught the craze for plant-collecting. Growing the newest exotics from every part of the world was the latest fashion. Presumably many of those orders arriving at continental nurseries in 1839 were coming from the other exhibitors and some of the 3,044 visitors to that Horticultural Society of London exhibition on the 18th of May.
Both the Wilts and Gloucestershire Standard (Saturday 24 July 1841) and the Salisbury and Winchester Journal (Monday 26 July 1841) reported on the Wilts Horticultural Show on the previous Tuesday 20 July. Mr Dodds, gardener to Edward Baker Esq, won the prize for 2nd best Stove Plant with a Stephanotis "floribundus".
In 1842 Louis Van Houtte of Ghent in Belgium was offering plants at 5 francs each. However, by this time British nurseries were producing their own. In The Ladies' Magazine of Gardening for 1842 we read:
This beautiful plant... ...It is a stove climber ; and there are very fine plants of it in Knight's nursery, King's Road, Chelsea, and, indeed, in most of the other London nurseries.
The Inverness Courier on Wednesday 28 June 1843 reported on the Forres and Nairn Horticultural Society Summer Exhibition held in Forres on Wednesday 14 June. Peter Hall, gardener to the "Hon. Sir William G.G. Cumming, Bart. of Altyre &c" won the prize for Best four Stove Plants with Stephanotis "floribundus", Thunbergia alata, Gloxinia rubra and speciosa. Hall also won first prizes for Best twelve Pelargoniums, Best six Roses, Best Stove Plant recently introduced for Gloxinia rubra, Best Stove Plant recently introduced for Achimenes longiflora, Best bunch of Grapes and Best three Stalks of Rhubarb. He also won second prizes for Best seedling Pelargonium, Best grown specimen of any Exotic Plant for Clematis sieboldii and Best twenty Pansies.
The Gardener's Chronicle on 29th July 1843 recommended Stephanotis floribunda to its readers:
The Bucks Gazette reported on Saturday 11 April 1846 that cut flowers being traded in London's Covent Garden Market included Stephanotis floribunda among Euphorbias, Heaths, Hyacinths, Tulips, Tropæolums, Jasmines, Lily of the Valley, Pentas carnea, Camellias, Azaleas, Acacias, Cyclamens, Daphnes, Orange flowers, Rhododendrons, Cinerarias, Gardenias, Moss and other Roses. The following year the London Express reported it was available from Covent Garden Market, also in April.
The Court Newsman of The Morning Post reported on Friday 30 March 1849 that on the previous afternoon Queen Victoria and Prince Albert held a drawing room. The hordes of aristocratic ladies had their costumes described in full. Many had bouquets or other floral decorations of exotic flowers. I am not sure if these were textile recreations or the actual flowers. This was early in the year for real Stephanotis flowers.
Lady Lucy Bridgeman and Lady Mary Bridgeman wore matching outfits:
The Liverpool Standard reported on Tuesday 07 May 1850 about their visit to Messrs Henderson and Brown's Oxton-hill Nursery in Cheshire. This would now be in a suburb of Birkenhead on the Wirral Peninsula. The reporter observed that:
Stephanotis floribunda Elvaston variety
It was reported in the The Gardener's Chronicle on the 7th of August 1880 (see illustration below) that:
The Garden; an Illustrated Weekly Journal of Horticulture in all its Branches reported in the issue for the 28th of August 1880 that:
Stephanotis floribunda "Polyanthum"?
I went out to get a few photos from plants in a garden centre and accidentally bought a plant. It was only £11. The flowers were still closed so I had to, didn't I? Unfortunately, January in Manchester is not the best time to buy a tropical/subtropical plant. It must have got chilled on the way home, despite my breathing into the bag to try to keep it warm. Most of the smaller buds had the stems turn yellow over a couple of weeks and then they fell off. Luckily the more mature buds survived and opened fully for their photo shoot. I had been smelling the delightful fragrance every evening for two weeks as I composed this article.
The flowers should have lasted longer if they had not been chilled, poor things. This is something that should be considered if buying a Stephanotis online in winter - is there a risk the plant will get chilled while being delivered?
When I looked up the nursery Altanova online I was very glad to find that they are concerned with their ecological footprint and among other good practices, seldom use pesticides. I was even happier to find that it is a family firm run by several Hoogendoorns, which is Dutch for tall-thorn. This company have a 2.5 hectare (6 acre) site just dedicated to cultivating Stephanotis floribunda.
When I emailed the company to ask what variety it is that they are growing, they replied that it is Stephanotis floribunda "Polyanthum". A search on the internet returned precisely zero returns for that phrase. I replied to their email asking if they had any details about this variety, as I had failed to find anything. They did not reply.
The word polyanthum is a modern latinisation of an old Greek word πολυανθος (polyanthos) meaning "many-flowered". The most well-known plant to have this as its specific name is the very popular houseplant Jasminum polyanthum, a Chinese subtropical jasmine with intensely fragrant flowers. Rather disappointingly, the Chinese name 多花素馨 (duō huā sùxīn) translates to "many-flowered jasmine".
Like the Elvaston variety this Stephanotis is very compact with leaves placed closely-together on the stems with dense clusters of flowers that are a little smaller than the first descriptions of the species. The flowers are about 3cm in diameter and 2.8cm long. The largest leaves on this plant are 9 cm (3½ inches) long and 5cm (2 inches) broad.
Stephanotis floribunda "Variegata"
There is also a variegated variety with pale and dark green and white mottling on the leaves that is available to buy. The less said about that, the better.
Other Colours and Species
There must be other varieties and selections of a plant that is so widely traded. If there are, no one seems to be bragging about them online anywhere that I can find them. The entire species of Stephanotis floribunda was given the Award of Garden Merit by the Royal Horticultural Society in 1993, without specifying a variety.
I am surprised that I can find no hint of hybrids between the species being bred for commercial nurseries. Stephanotis grandiflora, of course, has quite big flowers. The first description by Joseph Descaisne in 1844 gives the flowers as 7-8cm long.
Some of the other species have varieties with pink-flushed petals, violet flowers or pink-centred flowers. All the four species are very fragrant. I assume that the other species are so seldom seen in cultivation that no breeders have had access to them. The plants flower when very young, so a few generations could be bred in as many years.
The Gardener's Chronicle on 29th July 1843 recommended Stephanotis floribunda to its readers:
Stephanotis floribundus is the most accommodating plant we have, and ought to be in every collection, and in numbers too ; it will flower freely in the conservatory, when first brought forward, in a Vinery or stove, and it flowers in every intermediate degree up to the roasting or broiling heat of the Orchidaceous house.In the following two years there were newspaper reports of Stephanotis floribunda from flower shows in Devon, Cornwall, and Chichester.
The Bucks Gazette reported on Saturday 11 April 1846 that cut flowers being traded in London's Covent Garden Market included Stephanotis floribunda among Euphorbias, Heaths, Hyacinths, Tulips, Tropæolums, Jasmines, Lily of the Valley, Pentas carnea, Camellias, Azaleas, Acacias, Cyclamens, Daphnes, Orange flowers, Rhododendrons, Cinerarias, Gardenias, Moss and other Roses. The following year the London Express reported it was available from Covent Garden Market, also in April.
The Court Newsman of The Morning Post reported on Friday 30 March 1849 that on the previous afternoon Queen Victoria and Prince Albert held a drawing room. The hordes of aristocratic ladies had their costumes described in full. Many had bouquets or other floral decorations of exotic flowers. I am not sure if these were textile recreations or the actual flowers. This was early in the year for real Stephanotis flowers.
Lady Lucy Bridgeman and Lady Mary Bridgeman wore matching outfits:
Train of pink glace trimmed with tulle and bouquets of white stephanates; British lace skirts over glace. Headdress, feathers and lace lappets; ornaments, diamonds.
Lady Margaret ComptonAfter 1850 Stephanotis floribunda is mentioned far more frequently in flower-shows and commercial offerings of plants and cut flowers. It had clearly become a common stovehouse plant across the country. By 1851 the cut flowers were being sold in November and December so the growers had presumably noticed that they could manipulate the flowering times by artificial light.
A Court costume, composed of a white petticoat, with three tunics of white tulle, looped up all round with bouquets of white stephanotis; the train of white tafeta glace, trimmed all round with girondoles of white tulle goffered, edged with white satin ribbon, and bouquets of white stephanotis. Headdress, white feather and Brussels lace lappets.
The Liverpool Standard reported on Tuesday 07 May 1850 about their visit to Messrs Henderson and Brown's Oxton-hill Nursery in Cheshire. This would now be in a suburb of Birkenhead on the Wirral Peninsula. The reporter observed that:
...; the old favourites Stephanotis florabunda, Allamanda cathartica and Combretum purpureum, are in fine condition;
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| John Herbert Goodacre The Gardener's Chronicle 1922 From Biodiversity Heritage Library |
Though he had exhibited the cut flowers in May 1878, the summer of 1880 seems to have been the year that JH Goodacre started to exhibit his new variety of Stephanotis at many shows. He had been cultivating them for decorating the lord of the manor's London home for some years. Goodacre was head gardener at Elvaston Castle near Derby from 1872 to 1919, when he retired.
Mr Goodacre was an enthusiastic and award-winning exhibitor at horticultural shows, showing all sorts of produce including apples, apricots, cherries, chrysanthemums, figs, grapes, melons, peaches, pineapples, plums and potatoes. He was even quoted in adverts for show pea seeds.
At the Royal Horticultural Society Ordinary General Meeting on May 25th 1880, Goodacre showed some small Stephanotises trained over arches with four to six trusses of flower each. The reporter wrote that "...the value of such plants for decorative purposes cannot be overestimated."
It was reported in the The Gardener's Chronicle on the 7th of August 1880 (see illustration below) that:
There is a variety of this plant at Elvaston Castle, that bears out its name for abundant flowering to an extent I have never before seen equalled, and so far as can be judged by appearance, it is quite distinct. There are two plants, turned out in a narrow border, that cover about 45 square yards of the roof in a house wherein are grown ordinary stove plants ; the flowers were literally touching each other. I saw an account that was kept of the quantity cut last year, and which amounted to 13,000 bunches, or an average of over 300 to each square yard ; and this year, counting all that are in flower and coming on, the crop is quite equal, in fact the shoots seem to make few joints that do not produce a bunch : the leaves are much smaller than usual - a circumstance which points to the variety being distinct. The same free-flowering habit is present in newly struck cuttings, even in growth made through the winter....
...
The plants as they come into bloom are sent up to the family when in London, and undoubtedly are equal to anything in the way of successful miniature plant-growing that has ever been accomplished.
The Gardener's Chronicle 7th of August 1880
Stephanotis floribunda (Elvaston var.) — The specimen of this shown on Tuesday last at South Kensington was remarkable for the abundance of flowers which it showed on such a small plant, and it will doubtless prove an acquisition, being highly spoken of by competent cultivators. It is so distinct that it deserves a permanent distinguishing name, so that when it becomes to be generally distributed it may not be confused with the ordinary kind. It was shown by Mr. Goodacre, Elvaston Castle, Derby, and is said to have originated as a seedling in the garden there.By 1885 many nurseries were offering the Elvaston variety. On the 17th of May 1890 The Croydon Chronicle published a "A Chat with a Croydon Nurseryman", from a visit to a nursery on London Road in Croydon run by a Mr Thomas Butcher. It would be nice to think that this Mr Butcher was related to Edmund who helped flower the first Stephanotis in Britain but Butcher is a very common name. The reporter notes, with a dire need for for copy-editing, that:
In the same place was a fine piece of Stephanotis flori bunda of the Elvaston variety, which extend from end to end of the vast roof of the house.The majority of Stephanotis floribunda sold by nurseries, DIY stores and supermarkets today are probably the Elvaston variety or descendants of it. Though all the online vendors that I contacted by email have no idea whether the plant they are growing is a named variety or not.
Stephanotis floribunda in its modern natural habitat - the garden centre.
I bought the one on the left. Grown in a 12cm (4¾ inch) round pot.
Notcutts Garden Centre on the 21st of January 2020.
Notcutts Garden Centre on the 21st of January 2020.
I went out to get a few photos from plants in a garden centre and accidentally bought a plant. It was only £11. The flowers were still closed so I had to, didn't I? Unfortunately, January in Manchester is not the best time to buy a tropical/subtropical plant. It must have got chilled on the way home, despite my breathing into the bag to try to keep it warm. Most of the smaller buds had the stems turn yellow over a couple of weeks and then they fell off. Luckily the more mature buds survived and opened fully for their photo shoot. I had been smelling the delightful fragrance every evening for two weeks as I composed this article.
The flowers should have lasted longer if they had not been chilled, poor things. This is something that should be considered if buying a Stephanotis online in winter - is there a risk the plant will get chilled while being delivered?
I had another Stephanotis vine a few years
ago. It was the usual pot with the vine twined round a circle of wire
about 30cm (1 foot) across. My new plant is looped round a hoop of
plastic of the same size. The last plant put on a lot of strong new
growth when I potted it up. My mistake was to think that a plant with
several metre-long fast-growing shoots would need watering a lot. The
thick, waxy leaves are well-adapted to a sometimes dry environment. They
do not need as much water as you might expect. Then they die from root
rot.
When I looked up the nursery Altanova online I was very glad to find that they are concerned with their ecological footprint and among other good practices, seldom use pesticides. I was even happier to find that it is a family firm run by several Hoogendoorns, which is Dutch for tall-thorn. This company have a 2.5 hectare (6 acre) site just dedicated to cultivating Stephanotis floribunda.
The word polyanthum is a modern latinisation of an old Greek word πολυανθος (polyanthos) meaning "many-flowered". The most well-known plant to have this as its specific name is the very popular houseplant Jasminum polyanthum, a Chinese subtropical jasmine with intensely fragrant flowers. Rather disappointingly, the Chinese name 多花素馨 (duō huā sùxīn) translates to "many-flowered jasmine".
Like the Elvaston variety this Stephanotis is very compact with leaves placed closely-together on the stems with dense clusters of flowers that are a little smaller than the first descriptions of the species. The flowers are about 3cm in diameter and 2.8cm long. The largest leaves on this plant are 9 cm (3½ inches) long and 5cm (2 inches) broad.
UPDATE
This plant flowered again in August 2022. The plant was much less compact with a longer distance of vine between the leaf nodes and larger leaves. The flowers were also a little larger, 3.5cm diameter and 3cm long. The nursery may have used paclobutrazol as a dwarfing agent as it is commonly used to make ornamental plants more compact and saleable.
There is also a variegated variety with pale and dark green and white mottling on the leaves that is available to buy. The less said about that, the better.
There must be other varieties and selections of a plant that is so widely traded. If there are, no one seems to be bragging about them online anywhere that I can find them. The entire species of Stephanotis floribunda was given the Award of Garden Merit by the Royal Horticultural Society in 1993, without specifying a variety.
I am surprised that I can find no hint of hybrids between the species being bred for commercial nurseries. Stephanotis grandiflora, of course, has quite big flowers. The first description by Joseph Descaisne in 1844 gives the flowers as 7-8cm long.
Some of the other species have varieties with pink-flushed petals, violet flowers or pink-centred flowers. All the four species are very fragrant. I assume that the other species are so seldom seen in cultivation that no breeders have had access to them. The plants flower when very young, so a few generations could be bred in as many years.
Stephanotis thouarsii Brongn., Vohibola forest, Atsinanana,
Toamasina, Madagascar Copyright: Porter P. Lowry II, MBG,
Catalogue of the Plants of Madagascar
Toamasina, Madagascar Copyright: Porter P. Lowry II, MBG,
Catalogue of the Plants of Madagascar
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported
Stephanotis thouarsii Brongn., Antalaha, SAVA, Madagascar
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported
Stephanotis acuminata Brongn., Vohitralagnana forest, Atsinanana,
Toamasina, Madagascar Copyright: Patrice Antilahimena, MBG, 2017.
Catalogue of the Plants of Madagascar
Toamasina, Madagascar Copyright: Patrice Antilahimena, MBG, 2017.
Catalogue of the Plants of Madagascar
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported
UPDATE
New Species added to Stephanotis in 2022
In March 2022, a paper was published by some of the leading asclepiad taxonomists (classification botanists) that expanded the genus Stephanotis to include quite a few more species. The genus was considered only to include species native to Madagascar. The new understanding of the genus means that some are found over most of Africa except the north, parts of Arabia and much of South and Southeast Asia.
The previous names for the species show just how much discussion on the placement of these species there has been over the centuries. Hopefully, this definitive paper based on the genetic relatedness of the plants has solved that and these will be the names for a while. Though it seems there are always botanists who disagree.
The new species are:
Stephanotis abyssinica (Hochst.) S.Reuss, Liede & Meve
Native to: Ethiopia and many countries in Eastern, Central and Sub-Saharan West Africa.
Specific name meaning: "from Abyssinia", an old name for Ethiopia.
Previously called Pterygocarpus abyssinicus Hochst., Hoya africana Decne., Dregea africana Martelli, Dregea abyssinica (Hochst.) K.Schum., Marsdenia abyssinica (Hochst.) Schltr. and Marsdenia spissa S.Moore.
Previously called Pterygocarpus abyssinicus Hochst., Hoya africana Decne., Dregea africana Martelli, Dregea abyssinica (Hochst.) K.Schum., Marsdenia abyssinica (Hochst.) Schltr. and Marsdenia spissa S.Moore.
Stephanotis arabica (Decne.) S.Reuss, Liede & Meve
Native to: Yemen and the tiny island of Socotra.
Specific name meaning: "from Arabia". Yemen used to be called Arabia Felix - Happy Arabia.
On Socotra, the sweetly-scented flowers are used for personal decoration and when sniffed are believed to combat "noxious air" and prevent infections. Ethnoflora of Soqotra.
Previously called Dregea arabica Decne., Marsdenia arabica (Decne.) Omlor and Marsdenia robusta Balf.f.
Though separated by the new paper, this name is still on POWO Kew Gardens as part of Stephanotis abyssinica, so see the link above for images.
Stephanotis brevisquama (Jum. & H.Perrier) S.Reuss, Liede & Meve
Native to: Madagascar.
Native to: Madagascar.
Specific name meaning: "short scales". The corona has short scales, according to the original description from 1908.
Previously called Marsdenia brevisquama Jum. & H.Perrier
Stephanotis crinita (Oliv.) S.Reuss, Liede & Meve
Native to: Central Africa, Tropical coastal West Africa and Kenya.
Native to: Central Africa, Tropical coastal West Africa and Kenya.
Specific name meaning:"hairy" or "long-haired". The young stems, flower stalks and parts of the leaves are covered with rust-coloured fur.
Previously called Marsdenia crinita Oliv. and Dregea crinita (Oliv.) Bullock
Stephanotis ernstmeyeri S.Reuss, Liede & Meve
Native to: South Africa (Cape Provinces, KwaZulu-Natal), Mozambique and Swaziland
Specific
name meaning: "of Ernst Meyer", the hard-working botanist who named this species Dregea floribunda.
The new name could not be Stephanotis floribunda because there already was a different species called that. For discussion of the confusion caused by the old specific name, see below.
Previously called Dregea floribunda E.Mey., Pterophora dregea Harvey, Marsdenia floribunda (E.Mey.) N.E.Br. and Marsdenia dregea Schltr. The authors of the new paper chose a type herbarium specimen to define the species, as there was not one for Dregea floribunda. The new type specimen is called a lectotype. The specimen shows why the species was first named for its abundance of flowers.
Specimen P04212510 "Dregea floribunda E.Mey." Muséum national de Histoire naturelle, Paris (France) Collection: Vascular plants (P) http://coldb.mnhn.fr/catalognumber/mnhn/p/p04212510
Stephanotis faulknerae (Bullock) S.Reuss, Liede & Meve
Native to: Kenya, Mozambique and Tanzania.
Specific name meaning: "of Helen G Faulkner" (1888-1979), a botanical artist and plant collector who sent the type specimen to Kew Gardens. Biographical article (requires free registration).
Native to: Kenya, Mozambique and Tanzania.
Specific name meaning: "of Helen G Faulkner" (1888-1979), a botanical artist and plant collector who sent the type specimen to Kew Gardens. Biographical article (requires free registration).
Previously called Dregea faulknerae Bullock and Marsdenia faulknerae (Bullock) Omlor
Stephanotis macrantha (Klotzsch) S.Reuss, Liede & Meve
Native to: Southern Central and East Africa - Angola, Botswana, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
Specific name meaning: "big flower". The original description of the species says the "Blumenkrone" (flower crown) is 8 lines in diameter, ¾ inch or 1.9 cm. The flowers on the Kew Herbarium specimens are about 2 cm in diameter. This doesn't seem very large but I suppose it depends on the size of the flowers of the other Marsdenia species.
Previously called Dregea macrantha Klotzsch, Periploca petersiana Vatke, Marsdenia macrantha (Klotzsch) Schltr. and Marsdenia zambesiaca Schltr.
Native to: Southern Central and East Africa - Angola, Botswana, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
Specific name meaning: "big flower". The original description of the species says the "Blumenkrone" (flower crown) is 8 lines in diameter, ¾ inch or 1.9 cm. The flowers on the Kew Herbarium specimens are about 2 cm in diameter. This doesn't seem very large but I suppose it depends on the size of the flowers of the other Marsdenia species.
Previously called Dregea macrantha Klotzsch, Periploca petersiana Vatke, Marsdenia macrantha (Klotzsch) Schltr. and Marsdenia zambesiaca Schltr.
Stephanotis rubicunda (K.Schum.) S.Reuss, Liede & Meve
Native to: Botswana, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mozambique, Somalia, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda and Zimbabwe (I couldn't summarise that distribution easily).
Specific name meaning: "red" or "ruddy". The original description of the species has the new leaves as "beautifully reddish-felted (rubicundo-subtomentosis - though tomentum in Latin originally meant "cushion-stuffing"), then smooth above, finally smooth on both sides".
Previously called Dregea rubicunda K.Schum. and Marsdenia rubicunda (K.Schum.) N.E.Br.
Native to: Botswana, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mozambique, Somalia, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda and Zimbabwe (I couldn't summarise that distribution easily).
Specific name meaning: "red" or "ruddy". The original description of the species has the new leaves as "beautifully reddish-felted (rubicundo-subtomentosis - though tomentum in Latin originally meant "cushion-stuffing"), then smooth above, finally smooth on both sides".
Previously called Dregea rubicunda K.Schum. and Marsdenia rubicunda (K.Schum.) N.E.Br.
Stephanotis schimperi (Decne.) S.Reuss, Liede & Meve
Native to: West Africa: Angola, Cameroon and Nigeria. East Africa: Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda. Arabia: Saudi Arabia, Yemen
Specific name meaning: "of Georg Heinrich Wilhelm Schimper" botanist and plant collector. During over forty years in Ethiopia, he collected many plants, including the original specimen from which this species was described.
Previously called Marsdenia schimperi Decne., Gymnema macrocarpum A.Rich. and Traunia albiflora K.Schum.
Native to: West Africa: Angola, Cameroon and Nigeria. East Africa: Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda. Arabia: Saudi Arabia, Yemen
Specific name meaning: "of Georg Heinrich Wilhelm Schimper" botanist and plant collector. During over forty years in Ethiopia, he collected many plants, including the original specimen from which this species was described.
Previously called Marsdenia schimperi Decne., Gymnema macrocarpum A.Rich. and Traunia albiflora K.Schum.
Stephanotis stelostigma (K.Schum.) S.Reuss, Liede & Meve
Native to: Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia.
Specific name meaning: "stigma like a stylus". Though stela in Latin and stele (στήλη) in Greek both mean a pillar, the adjective stiliformi used in the original description makes it clear that the author meant a stylus as used to inscribe wax tablets.
Previously called Marsdenia stelostigma K.Schum., Stigmatorhynchus stelostigma (K.Schum.) Schltr., Dregea stelostigma (K.Schum.) Bullock and Marsdenia stefaninii Chiov.
Native to: Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia.
Specific name meaning: "stigma like a stylus". Though stela in Latin and stele (στήλη) in Greek both mean a pillar, the adjective stiliformi used in the original description makes it clear that the author meant a stylus as used to inscribe wax tablets.
Previously called Marsdenia stelostigma K.Schum., Stigmatorhynchus stelostigma (K.Schum.) Schltr., Dregea stelostigma (K.Schum.) Bullock and Marsdenia stefaninii Chiov.
Stephanotis volubilis (L.f.) S.Reuss, Liede & Meve
Native to: the entire Indian subcontinent from Sri Lanka and the Andaman Islands to Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh. All of South East Asia from Myanmar and South China to the Nicobar Islands, Philippines, Malaya and Java
Specific name meaning: "turning", "spinning", meaning "twining" in botany.
Previously called Wattakaka volubilis (L.f.) Stapf, Asclepias volubilis L.f., Hoya viridiflora R.Br., Schollia volubilis (L.f.) Jacq. ex Steud., Dregea volubilis (L.f.) Benth. ex Hook.f., Wattakaka viridiflora Hassk., Dregea volubilis var. viridiflora Kuntze, Marsdenia volubilis (L.f.) Cooke, Wattakaka pubescens Miq., Chlorochlamys celebica Miq., Dregea pubescens (Miq.) Boerl., Tylophora macrantha Hance, Dregea formosana T.Yamaz. and Hoya formosana T.Yamaz.
Native to: the entire Indian subcontinent from Sri Lanka and the Andaman Islands to Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh. All of South East Asia from Myanmar and South China to the Nicobar Islands, Philippines, Malaya and Java
Specific name meaning: "turning", "spinning", meaning "twining" in botany.
Previously called Wattakaka volubilis (L.f.) Stapf, Asclepias volubilis L.f., Hoya viridiflora R.Br., Schollia volubilis (L.f.) Jacq. ex Steud., Dregea volubilis (L.f.) Benth. ex Hook.f., Wattakaka viridiflora Hassk., Dregea volubilis var. viridiflora Kuntze, Marsdenia volubilis (L.f.) Cooke, Wattakaka pubescens Miq., Chlorochlamys celebica Miq., Dregea pubescens (Miq.) Boerl., Tylophora macrantha Hance, Dregea formosana T.Yamaz. and Hoya formosana T.Yamaz.
This last species is definitely an outlier, only being found in Asia. All the other species of the newly expanded Stephanotis are only found in Madagascar, Africa and Arabia. Wattakaka volubilis is probably the most well-known of the species that have been transferred to the genus Stephanotis and has many common names. The leaves and fruit are used as a vegetable throughout its native range. It is also used medicinally in most areas. The flowers are fragrant. Because it is so useful and ornamental, it has been introduced to many places outside its native range.
The authors of the new study don't seem to have tested the other species of Wattakaka. It would be a shame to lose the name Wattakaka, which comes from the Malayalam name Watta-kaka-codi. The word vatta or watta means "round", kaka-kodi = "crow-flag", the Malayalam name for another plant known to botanists as Anodendron parviflorum. The kaka-kodi is in the same Apocynaceae family, a similar-looking plant with longer, narrower leaves but only distantly related within the family.
The paper also found several other genera that needed to be changed but they did not have enough data to show exactly how Hoya should be divided. The current Hoya appears to be three closely-related but separate genera. One group would still be Hoya (including the type species Hoya carnosa), another group would probably be given the previous genus name Clemensiella (including Hoya coronaria) and the other group (including Hoya bella) would need a new genus name to be invented. As Kew Gardens' POWO currently recognises 545 species, testing a significant number of species would be a mammoth task. The genus Dischidia appears to be nested in with Hoya, so those 126 recognised species of Dischidia would also have to be tested. I do hope someone does it soon, though. It would be fascinating.
Reference:
Liede-Schumann, S, Reuss, SJ, Meve, U, Gâteblé, G, Livshultz, T,
Forster, PI, Wanntorp, L & Rodda, M (2022), "Phylogeny of
Marsdenieae (Apocynaceae, Asclepiadoideae) based on chloroplast and
nuclear loci, with a conspectus of the genera" Taxon (2022) 71(4): 833-875 https://doi.org/10.1002/tax.12713 Accessed 6/10/2022
Flower structure
Stephanotis floribunda is very popular worldwide as a beautiful houseplant tolerant of neglect and readily producing spectacular bunches of white flowers with a delightful fragrance. In natural daylight in the UK they flower from May to October. The glossy dark green leaves show off the bright white flowers rather well. The clusters of flowers are still used, and often sold, in many countries for gracing weddings, etc.
By manipulating day length Stephanotis can be persuaded to flower at any time of the year. To stimulate flowering the plant needs to receive over 14 hours of daylight and at least 4 hours of dark. Night-time temperatures should be at least 18°C (65°F) during flower formation for the best results. The plant will tolerate lower temperatures during non-flowering seasons.
Stephanotis floribunda is found in the wild between the latitudes of 20.9°S and 25.6°S on the island of Madagascar. This means that the maximum day length during the local summer solstice is between 13 hours 24 minutes and 13 hours 48 minutes from sunrise to sunset. You could add half an hour of twilight to each end of the day to add an hour to the actual length of daylight.
The amount of light needed to stimulate flowering is not much, about 50 to 100 lumens per square metre. This means that a single 13w LED lightbulb could be used to define the day length for up to 30 square metres of plants. That small amount of light could also prevent flowering if the night is interrupted in such a way that there would be less than four hours of continuous darkness.
In 1999 just one Dutch houseplant nursery had a greenhouse of 10,000m² (1 hectare or 2.47 acres) with 500,000 plants growing. The plants were taken to another greenhouse where manipulating the day length convinced the plants to start flowering.
In the area of that greenhouse where cuttings were taken to propagate new plants, the latex was so abundant in the air that four workers developed allergies to it. Water sprinklers had to be introduced to knock the latex particles out of the air.
The wild plants are listed by the IUCN Red List as Vulnerable. Most of the living beings on Madagascar are at least Vulnerable, most more endangered than that. The only wild populations are found near the coast in the far south and south-east.
Fragrance
An essential oil can be produced in small quantities from the flowers at great expense. I don't know if it actually exists in the commercial market today, or ever has existed in history. The vast majority of results for a search for the essential oil will be for "fragrance oils", synthetic or natural mixtures sold for their supposed resemblance to Stephanotis. It is probable that many commercial perfumes that claim to contain Stephanotis essential oil still imitate the Stephanotis with mixtures of other, cheaper, essential oils of "white flowers" like tuberose and jasmine in order to give the impression that there is more Stephanotis essential oil being used in their product.
J & E Atkinson of Bond Street, London started a marketing push in 1869 that saw them enter markets around the world. An advert in the The New York Herald of New York in the USA on the 2nd of October 1870 offered:
The perfume company Floris (of 89 Jermyn Street, London) makes the curious claim for their Stephanotis soap and bath essence that James Floris had composed their Stephanotis fragrance in 1796. This was ten years before the Stephanotis name was first coined for the plant. I emailed them to ask about this paradox. As yet, I have had no reply. Floris also reference weddings, which obviously only used Stephanotis a lot later, after the plant's introduction to Britain. It is even stranger that Floris placed an advert on page 120 of The Tatler of Friday the 30th of November 1928, simply listing four perfumes as:
I don't wish to imply that a supplier of perfumes to the current Queen and Prince of Wales are deliberately lying to push their pongs. I am sure it is just an honest mistake caused by "Family Anecdotes". In their modern advertising, Floris use the rather misleading phrase "evocative of the intensely fragrant stephanotis blossom" to make the potential customer believe that the fragrance contains actual Stephanotis. They do not list ingredients for either the soap or bath essence on their website.
An article in The Sphere of the 23rd of May 1931 reassures us that the delicately scented soap from Floris "is of course guaranteed to be made of animal fat".
Hermitage Oils is a mail order specialist in unusual and precious essential oils, absolutes and resins now based in Tuscany. If you think you have seen all the available natural fragrances, I advise checking their range of 450 products. When I asked him about Stephanotis by email, Adam Michael informed me that he had never encountered or been offered Stephanotis essential oil in the 15 years that he has been managing the company.
Stephanotis floribunda usually starts producing its fragrance at about 6 pm and ceases about 3 am. The exception is one compound (1-nitro-2-phenylethane) that is produced during the day and not during the night. It is not known if this compound attracts a different pollinator or repels insect attacks on the flower.
Some flowers, like the related Hoya carnosa, can remember the time of day even in continuous light with no periods of darkness. Stephanotis kept in continuous light loses the daily rhythm of fragrance production after 2 or 3 days.
Most of the fragrance of Stephanotis flowers is produced just from the front side of the petal lobes, with just a little methyl benzoate being produced by the upper part of the tube. This is speculated to be so that the fragrance does not go into the interior of a crowded bunch of flowers but only to the outside, where it can be quickly dispersed into the surrounding air to be detected by the pollinators at quite a distance.
Compounds detected in the scent include: benzyl alcohol, (E)-β-ocimene, β-linalool, methyl benzoate, methyl salicylate and α-farnesene. Another investigation found methyl benzoate (62.1%), (E)-Ocimene (14%), an unidentified aromatic ester (10%), benzyl alcohol (4.5%), (Z)-3-Hexen-1-ol (1.4%), and 39 other identified compounds at less than 1%. All of these main compounds are also produced by flowers of the true jasmines (several Jasminum species). Benzylnitrile was present at 0.5% and indole at 0.1% in Stephanotis. True jasmine flowers also produce benzylnitrile and indole in small amounts but they have an effect on the fragrance out of of proportion to their quantity. Stephanotis does not produce the jasmine-specific compunds of jasmonates, jasmine lactone and jasmones.
Stephanotic acid
Apart from the fragrance the plant does not seem to have been investigated very much for its chemical products. The one exception is the discovery of stephanotic acid from the stems in 2000 by a team in Tokushima, Japan.
Stephanotic acid is a cyclic pentapeptide. This means that it is composed of five amino acids, like a protein but much, much smaller. The amino acids are isoleucine, leucine, proline, tryptophan and valine. These are all normal amino acids found in common proteins.
Four of those amino acids form a ring joined by three peptide bonds, the usual bonding between amino acids found in proteins. The fourth bond is an unusual carbon-carbon bond between the side chain of the leucine and the benzene ring of the tryptophan. The remaining amino acid that is not part of the ring is a proline attached by a peptide bond to the leucine.
Since the discovery of stephanotic acid, other cyclic peptides have been found in other plants of the Asclepiadoideae - Caralluma frerei (from India), Echidnopsis dammaniana (from Kenya) and Stapelianthus decaryi (also from Madagascar). Since 1959 many cyclic peptides have been found in other plant families. These compounds seem to be a common strategy used by plants to deter insects.
English Common Names
Madagascar jasmine
Though not related to jasmine, the flowers do look like a robust, waxy version. Though the earliest descriptions in 1835 mentioned the scent as being like tuberose, in 1836, Neumann, the gardener who first grew it in Europe, wrote:
The first use of the name Madagascar Jasmine that I could find was in 1883.
Bridal Wreath or Madagascar Chaplet-Flower
The flowers are a pure glowing white, beautifully-shaped, a good size and held in graceful clusters. The fibrous stems and waxy flowers are robust enough to survive a long, hot, windy or rainy day of festivities and the clumsy, nervous and/or drunk wedding party.
The Berkshire Chronicle reported on Saturday the 5th of February 1853 about a society wedding on Tuesday the 1st of February. This was only about 14 years after the first recorded flowering of Stephanotis floribunda in Britain. Woodlands St. Mary is halfway between Swindon and Newbury. The report came below reports of pigeon shooting prizes, an Earl's will, concerts of a choral society, horse-stealing and watercress robberies:
Describing the cultivated plants of Port Louis in Mauritius, the Rev. William Ellis wrote in 1859:
The Illustrated London Alamanack for 1866 appears to have recycled content from another publication without attribution. I can't find the original, though they copied one phrase from the Leo H Grindon quote above. They continue with:
In 1869, the Gentleman's Magazine published an article on a fruit and flower farm in Ascot, by the racecourse. The author gave instructions for a, presumably highly fashionable, bouquet:
Hawaiian Wedding Flower, pua-male
The plant grows very easily outdoors on the islands of Hawai'i. The Hawai'ian name is pua-male, meaning "wedding flower". It was also called Ka'iulani's flower because it was a favourite flower of the Hawai'ian Princess Ka'iulani (1875-1899). I have not been able to find out exactly when Stephanotis was introduced to Hawai'i. It quickly became a favourite of makers of leis, the traditional garland.
The first mentions I found of stephanotis in Hawai'i in the Library of Congress newspaper archive were in 1880. One mentioned that "The stephanotis is in flower, and makes its presence known by its perfumes." The other recommended Stephanotis among other flowers as formal dinner table decorations.
In Hawai'ian newspapers from 1881 to 1884 there were three mentions of its use at funerals and three of it being used to decorate St Andrew's Cathedral for Easter celebrations. The first two weddings with Stephanotis in the newspapers were in 1885. There were three more weddings with stephanotis reported in 1888 and one more in 1889.§
The first mention of Stephanotis in a newspaper in the continental USA was in the Southern Standard of Columbus, Mississippi on the 24th of May 1851. They published a letter from Wm. Saunders, Gardener to Jno. Hopkins Esq., Clifton Park, Baltimore, dated the 6th of January 1851. He states in the letter that among many plants he was happy to get chilled if they were properly prepared was Stephanotis. However, I am not sure if he had grown Stephanotis in the USA or not. He had only arrived in 1848 and was employed by John Hopkins at some time in 1850. It would surely take longer than that to be sure you had damaged a plant by chilling it. Saunders had previously worked at Kew Gardens.
The next mention was in The Daily Dispatch on the 19th of November 1855. James Guest of the Hollywood Nursery in Richmond, Virginia wished to sell various plants due to moving to a new location. One plant was "a large Green House Climber (Stephanotis florabunda,)".
On the 1st of July 1865 a Mrs TW Ward of Canton, Massachusetts sent some very choice cut flowers of Stephanotis floribunda to a flower show of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society. HH Hunnewell was awarded the first premium for best specimen plant for a Stephanotis floribunda at another Massachusetts Horticultural Society show on the 6th of June 1868.
Instructions for making bouquets were given in the The Evening Star of Washington, DC in the USA on the 15th of July 1874, apparently republished from the Springfield Republican. Stephanotis was mentioned as one of the few flowers you could make into a star pattern without boring the author, as it was by nature star-shaped.
The Essex County Herald of Guildhall, Vermont in the USA published an article on the 7th of November 1874 about the fashions worn at a society wedding in Chicago. On the 20th of October 1874 the wealthy heiress Ida Marie Honoré had married Frederick Dent Grant, the son of the serving President of the USA, Ulysses S. Grant. The bride's dress was:
Floradora
The Royal Horticultural Society includes floradora as one of three common names. Many other websites repeat it but I can't find any history for that name being used for Stephanotis floribunda before 1979, in the Reader's Digest Success with Houseplants.
The musical comedy Florodora became a big hit in London in 1899 where it ran for 455 performances. In New York it ran for another 552 shows. The first act of the musical was set on the fictional island of Florodora in the Philippines. The second act was set in Abercoed Castle in Wales. On Florodora, a perfume was made by the locals from a fictional plant called Florodora. Clearly Florodora is simply Spanishy Latin flor odora, smelly flower. Following the wild success of the musical, in the 1900s and 1910s several plant and florist catalogues carried flowers with varieties called Floradora or Florodora, including dahlias, gladioli and rhododendrons.
In 1903 in the USA, the perfume company Adolph Spiehler had a trade name Florodora. In the same list D.R. Bradley & Son had a trade name Floradora. In 1906 the people of Des Moines in the USA could buy Heywood's Florodora chocolates. In 1913 in London it was Grossmith who had the perfume Florodora.
Perhaps, at some point someone thought the Stephanotis was the perfect exotic stand-in for the fictional Filipino fragrant flower, Florodora.
Another possibility is that the use of the name is one of those terrible confusions caused by relatively uncommon words being used in a context different from their familiar use. Among the many types of garden flowers to have varieties named Floradora or Florodora is a rose bred in the United States of America. The Floradora rose has geranium red flowers, prefers a cool climate and became very popular. Floradora won an All America Award in 1945, soon after its introduction to commercial sales. From a number of online descriptions, it seems to be only slightly fragrant compared to other roses.
How could this lead to confusion? The Floradora rose was a "floribunda" type. Floribunda roses get their name from having lots of flowers. They were also called hybrid polyanthas because they are bred by crossing hybrid tea and polyantha type roses. Of course, the only connection between the floribunda rose "Floradora" and Stephanotis floribunda is the word "floribunda".
Just to add to the coincidence, the Floradora rose was one of the parents of "Queen Elizabeth", the first of a new class of roses that were named "grandiflora" types. As far as I know, this has not caused confusion with Stephanotis grandiflora.
Creeping Tuberose
The first use of the name creeping tuberose that I can find was from 1869. The first description of the name Stephanotis floribunda from 1834 likened the fragrance to that of the tuberose. Though similar, I would not say that they were that close. Both are classed as "white flowers" by perfumers, along with gardenia, jasmine and orange blossom.
The waxy, potently fragrant flowers of the tuberose are also white with a long tube. The flowers are star-shaped, though with six rather than five points and are fragrant during the day. The tuberose is native to Mexico. The omixochitl (bone flower) was cultivated and prized for its fragrant flowers by the Aztecs. The roots were used like soap due to their high content of saponins. They were also called amole, a general term used of many soap plants.
The tuberose is now called Agave amica but was previously, and still universally among gardeners and perfumers, known as Polianthes tuberosa. The tuberose looks quite unlike the other agaves as it grows new soft, spineless leaves each year from an underground tuber. Most agaves only flower after many decades of growth. The tuberose flowers every year. This is an another exciting example of the power of genetic testing to clear up relationships between plants that are obscured by dramatic changes in growth habits.
Waxflower (, Clustered)
The flowers are quite waxy. Also used of other flowers. The related Hoya carnosa was called wax-plant as early as 1827. The flowers of Hoya carnosa look like they were carved from little blocks of red and white or pale pink wax.
Copious-Flowering Stephanotis
Coined in 1844, this one did not catch on with the public.
Origin of the botanical name
The Stephanotis pretends to have a normal flower like a true jasmine but it hides the strange floral structures associated with the asclepiads deep inside.
KEYS
21st Century
Duvalia polita N.E. Br, another member of the
Asclepiadoideae subfamily of the Apocynaceae
The peculiarity of the asclepiads is their pollen mass held together by wax into a solid lump called a pollinium. These are held in pairs connected by devices of varying shapes and sizes. These are designed to attach to a visiting insect and to be carried to another flower where it fits into a perfectly-shaped receptive groove.
This might seem a bit of a gamble compared to the usual methods that plants use. Most plants will produce millions of powdery individual grains of pollen that are carried to the other flowers by wind or dusted onto an insect, lizard, bat, bird or other pollinator. The pay-off for putting all their pollen in one basket is worth it for the asclepiads as the fruit will get enough pollen for a full complement of seeds.
The orchid family is the only other group of plants that have their pollen cemented together into a lump. Their pollinia are usually pressed against and so glued onto the visiting pollinator. They are quite far away from the asclepiads in the family tree of flowering plants. The orchids and asclepiads arrived at similar solutions for pollination through convergent evolution.
Stephanotis floribunda flower with part of corolla removed to show the gynostegium.
Stephanotis floribunda flower with part of corolla removed and
cross-section of the gynostegium. Different flower, I mauled the
first one trying to cut it in half.
The top two folds of the anther appendages removed to reveal
the corpusculum, parts of the pollinia and caudicle wing.
The inside of the coronal lobe and anther appendage
showing pollinia and corpuscula.
The pale amber pollinia can be seen to be connected in pairs by the transparent caudicle wing through the dark amber corpusculum with the pollinium on the neighbouring anther appendage, not with the one sitting next to it on the same anther appendage. The entire structure is called the pollinarium, but I couldn't get a complete one separated from the rest without something falling off. This is the structure that entangles some part of the visiting insect so that the pollinium is carried away, hopefully to another flower of the same species.
Progressive slices through the female parts of the flower, though actually two different flowers. I used two cool white LED bulbs for illumination so I don't know where the orange hue came from.
You can see that there are two carpels or ovaries in each flower. In Stephanotis and many of the tribe Marsdenieae it is usual that only one of the ovaries will develop into a fruit. In other members of the family both ovaries will develop into fruit. This can lead to a distinctive two-horned fruit.
Ceropegia woodii, the common houseplant often called String of Hearts.
The distinctive two-horned fruit is at the top right of the photo.
KEYS
Everything from C to F can be referred to together as the gynostegium,
from the ancient Greek for "women's roof" as they almost cover the female parts of the flower.
Stephanotis floribunda is very popular worldwide as a beautiful houseplant tolerant of neglect and readily producing spectacular bunches of white flowers with a delightful fragrance. In natural daylight in the UK they flower from May to October. The glossy dark green leaves show off the bright white flowers rather well. The clusters of flowers are still used, and often sold, in many countries for gracing weddings, etc.
By manipulating day length Stephanotis can be persuaded to flower at any time of the year. To stimulate flowering the plant needs to receive over 14 hours of daylight and at least 4 hours of dark. Night-time temperatures should be at least 18°C (65°F) during flower formation for the best results. The plant will tolerate lower temperatures during non-flowering seasons.
Stephanotis floribunda is found in the wild between the latitudes of 20.9°S and 25.6°S on the island of Madagascar. This means that the maximum day length during the local summer solstice is between 13 hours 24 minutes and 13 hours 48 minutes from sunrise to sunset. You could add half an hour of twilight to each end of the day to add an hour to the actual length of daylight.
The amount of light needed to stimulate flowering is not much, about 50 to 100 lumens per square metre. This means that a single 13w LED lightbulb could be used to define the day length for up to 30 square metres of plants. That small amount of light could also prevent flowering if the night is interrupted in such a way that there would be less than four hours of continuous darkness.
In 1999 just one Dutch houseplant nursery had a greenhouse of 10,000m² (1 hectare or 2.47 acres) with 500,000 plants growing. The plants were taken to another greenhouse where manipulating the day length convinced the plants to start flowering.
In the area of that greenhouse where cuttings were taken to propagate new plants, the latex was so abundant in the air that four workers developed allergies to it. Water sprinklers had to be introduced to knock the latex particles out of the air.
The wild plants are listed by the IUCN Red List as Vulnerable. Most of the living beings on Madagascar are at least Vulnerable, most more endangered than that. The only wild populations are found near the coast in the far south and south-east.
An essential oil can be produced in small quantities from the flowers at great expense. I don't know if it actually exists in the commercial market today, or ever has existed in history. The vast majority of results for a search for the essential oil will be for "fragrance oils", synthetic or natural mixtures sold for their supposed resemblance to Stephanotis. It is probable that many commercial perfumes that claim to contain Stephanotis essential oil still imitate the Stephanotis with mixtures of other, cheaper, essential oils of "white flowers" like tuberose and jasmine in order to give the impression that there is more Stephanotis essential oil being used in their product.
J & E Atkinson of Bond Street, London started a marketing push in 1869 that saw them enter markets around the world. An advert in the The New York Herald of New York in the USA on the 2nd of October 1870 offered:
Atkinsons's (of London) English PerfumerysAn advert in the Alexandria Gazette and Virginia Advertiser of Virginia in the USA on the 13th of February 1874 offered:
Stephanotis, Gardenia and others. The genuine only at J.C.
RUSHTON'S, Broadway, corner of Twenty-fifth Street.
PERFUMES FOR THE HANDKERCHIEF.The first Stephanotis fragrance advertised in the British Chemist and Druggist was in the issue of the 15th of September 1875. Whitaker and Grossmith of London offered bottles of "bouquets" of various scents, including Stephanotis. During the next ten years many more companies started advertising their own products with fragrances supposedly evoking Stephanotis.
Atkinson's "Essence of Stephanotis," Lubin's Extracts and Sachet Powders of all odors, just received by
WARFIELD & HALL
The perfume company Floris (of 89 Jermyn Street, London) makes the curious claim for their Stephanotis soap and bath essence that James Floris had composed their Stephanotis fragrance in 1796. This was ten years before the Stephanotis name was first coined for the plant. I emailed them to ask about this paradox. As yet, I have had no reply. Floris also reference weddings, which obviously only used Stephanotis a lot later, after the plant's introduction to Britain. It is even stranger that Floris placed an advert on page 120 of The Tatler of Friday the 30th of November 1928, simply listing four perfumes as:
NEWEST PERFUMES
CUIR DE RUSSIE
(RUSSIA LEATHER PERFUME)
FREESIA
HONEYSUCKLE
STEPHANOTIS
I don't wish to imply that a supplier of perfumes to the current Queen and Prince of Wales are deliberately lying to push their pongs. I am sure it is just an honest mistake caused by "Family Anecdotes". In their modern advertising, Floris use the rather misleading phrase "evocative of the intensely fragrant stephanotis blossom" to make the potential customer believe that the fragrance contains actual Stephanotis. They do not list ingredients for either the soap or bath essence on their website.
An article in The Sphere of the 23rd of May 1931 reassures us that the delicately scented soap from Floris "is of course guaranteed to be made of animal fat".
Hermitage Oils is a mail order specialist in unusual and precious essential oils, absolutes and resins now based in Tuscany. If you think you have seen all the available natural fragrances, I advise checking their range of 450 products. When I asked him about Stephanotis by email, Adam Michael informed me that he had never encountered or been offered Stephanotis essential oil in the 15 years that he has been managing the company.
Stephanotis floribunda usually starts producing its fragrance at about 6 pm and ceases about 3 am. The exception is one compound (1-nitro-2-phenylethane) that is produced during the day and not during the night. It is not known if this compound attracts a different pollinator or repels insect attacks on the flower.
Some flowers, like the related Hoya carnosa, can remember the time of day even in continuous light with no periods of darkness. Stephanotis kept in continuous light loses the daily rhythm of fragrance production after 2 or 3 days.
Most of the fragrance of Stephanotis flowers is produced just from the front side of the petal lobes, with just a little methyl benzoate being produced by the upper part of the tube. This is speculated to be so that the fragrance does not go into the interior of a crowded bunch of flowers but only to the outside, where it can be quickly dispersed into the surrounding air to be detected by the pollinators at quite a distance.
Compounds detected in the scent include: benzyl alcohol, (E)-β-ocimene, β-linalool, methyl benzoate, methyl salicylate and α-farnesene. Another investigation found methyl benzoate (62.1%), (E)-Ocimene (14%), an unidentified aromatic ester (10%), benzyl alcohol (4.5%), (Z)-3-Hexen-1-ol (1.4%), and 39 other identified compounds at less than 1%. All of these main compounds are also produced by flowers of the true jasmines (several Jasminum species). Benzylnitrile was present at 0.5% and indole at 0.1% in Stephanotis. True jasmine flowers also produce benzylnitrile and indole in small amounts but they have an effect on the fragrance out of of proportion to their quantity. Stephanotis does not produce the jasmine-specific compunds of jasmonates, jasmine lactone and jasmones.
Apart from the fragrance the plant does not seem to have been investigated very much for its chemical products. The one exception is the discovery of stephanotic acid from the stems in 2000 by a team in Tokushima, Japan.
Stephanotic acid structure.
Not elegant and a bit fuzzy but I am not redrawing it.
Courtesy of ChemSpider
Stephanotic acid is a cyclic pentapeptide. This means that it is composed of five amino acids, like a protein but much, much smaller. The amino acids are isoleucine, leucine, proline, tryptophan and valine. These are all normal amino acids found in common proteins.
Four of those amino acids form a ring joined by three peptide bonds, the usual bonding between amino acids found in proteins. The fourth bond is an unusual carbon-carbon bond between the side chain of the leucine and the benzene ring of the tryptophan. The remaining amino acid that is not part of the ring is a proline attached by a peptide bond to the leucine.
Since the discovery of stephanotic acid, other cyclic peptides have been found in other plants of the Asclepiadoideae - Caralluma frerei (from India), Echidnopsis dammaniana (from Kenya) and Stapelianthus decaryi (also from Madagascar). Since 1959 many cyclic peptides have been found in other plant families. These compounds seem to be a common strategy used by plants to deter insects.
Madagascar jasmine
Though not related to jasmine, the flowers do look like a robust, waxy version. Though the earliest descriptions in 1835 mentioned the scent as being like tuberose, in 1836, Neumann, the gardener who first grew it in Europe, wrote:
... they breathe out a very agreeable odour, similar to that of jasmine.In the original French:
...elles exhalent une odeur très-suave, semblable à celle du jasmin.Both Jasminum and Stephanotis have probably evolved with long-tongued moths as pollinators, leading to convergent evolution of white flowers with long tubes. The depth of the flower prevents most other insects from accessing the nectar at the very end of the tube. Both also produce a sweet scent in the evening to attract the moths.
The first use of the name Madagascar Jasmine that I could find was in 1883.
The flowers are a pure glowing white, beautifully-shaped, a good size and held in graceful clusters. The fibrous stems and waxy flowers are robust enough to survive a long, hot, windy or rainy day of festivities and the clumsy, nervous and/or drunk wedding party.
The Berkshire Chronicle reported on Saturday the 5th of February 1853 about a society wedding on Tuesday the 1st of February. This was only about 14 years after the first recorded flowering of Stephanotis floribunda in Britain. Woodlands St. Mary is halfway between Swindon and Newbury. The report came below reports of pigeon shooting prizes, an Earl's will, concerts of a choral society, horse-stealing and watercress robberies:
MARRIAGE IN HIGH LIFE.— On Tuesday last, the retired village of Woodlands St. Mary, Berks, was enlivened by the interesting nuptials of Miss Constance Anne Cuyler, second daughter of Sir Charles Cuyler, Bart., of Inholmes-house, who was led to the hymeneal altar by John Rocke, Esq., of Clungunford-house, Shropshire. At eleven o'clock the bridesgroom arrived, escorted by Mr. Longridge, Mr. Alfred Rocke, Mr. Frederick Cuyler, and Mr. Gerald Cuyler. The fair bride arrived soon afterwards, wearing a superb dress of rich white glacée silk, brodée en soie, à deux jupes, corsage Watteau, with veil of Brussels lace, duchesse wreath, and bouquet of stephanotis and orange blossom. She was attended by four bridesmaids, Miss Cuyler, Miss Louisa Rocke, Miss Theresa Cuyler, and Miss Alice Cuyler, attired in elegant toilettes. The whole party then entered the very beautiful little church which was still gay with the tasteful decorations of Christmas, and filled with a numerous congregation. The marriage ceremony was performed by the Rev. Owen Rocke, brother to the bridegroom and rector of Clungunford, assisted by the Rev. John Bacon, incumbent of the parish, the bride being given away by Sir Charles Cuyler. The service concluded, a profusion of white favours adorned with orange flowers for the ladies, and with acorns for the gentlemen, were distributed by the chief bridesmaid, and the party then returned to Sir Charles Cuyler's house, where they were entertained with an elegant déjeuner. Afterwards the happy pair started with four gallant greys on their way to their seat in Shropshire, to receive the congratulations and promote the festivity of the tenantry.The Maidstone & Kentish Journal reported a wedding on Tuesday 27 June 1854, under reports of the previous Sunday's sermons and above a description of a festival of the Loyal Eden Lodge of the Odd Fellows. Wrotham is halfway between Maidstone and Sevenoaks.
WROTHAMThe Observer newspaper reported on a wedding in the edition of the 8th of March 1857 (abridged from the Morning Post of the 5th of March and found on ProQuest through my local library). On the previous Wednesday, the 4th of March 1857, "the marriage by Jewish ceremonial" of the French Baron Alphonse de Rothschild and his cousin Leonora from the English branch of the family was celebrated at Gunnersbury Park, near Kew Gardens. Music was provided by the 1st Life Guards. It was "... a scene and an occasion perhaps as impressive and picturesque as have found record in matrimonial annals". "The bridal chaplet was formed of orange blossoms, the stephanotis, and lilies of the valley, with pendants of jessamine and Mayflower." Stephanotis was soon chosen by less wealthy brides (almost all brides were less wealthy that the Rothschilds, of course).
The marriage of John Bourryan Broadley, Esq., (late Captain 17th Lancers), and of Elinor Sarah, daughter of the Rev. Charles Lane, rector of Wrotham, rural dean, &c., was solemnized on Thursday, the 22nd ult, ; on which occasion the town of Wrotham presented an appearance as attractive as it was festive. The weather was most propitious ; the sun shone brightly on the bride ; while flags displaying the armorial bearings of the families about to be united, while others suspended from the tower and porch, bells ringing, and happy faces of sympathy and congratulation, combined to render the scene bright and pleasing in a high degree. Crowds of people of every grade , eager to testify their participation in an event of so much interest to the rector and his family, assembled at an early hour ; and long before the ceremony began the venerable church , which was most beautifully decorated with flowers for the occasion, and every approach to it were filled to excess. The bride who was led to the altar by her brother, Captain Douglas Lane, by whom she was given away, wore white glace silk a dress of superb Brussels point-lace with flounces ; and a manteau and veil of the same. The bridal wreath was of orange flowers, and drooping bouquets of acacia and stephanotis ornamented the dress. The interesting group of bridesmaids—who were all similarly attired in tarlatan dresses, composed of two jupons looped up, with satin and gauze ribbon and loose casaques of rich white silk, and bonnets of lace ornamented with white clematis—were the Hon. Miss Osborne, the Hon. Blanche Godolphin Osborne, Miss Alice Sandford, Miss Warde, Miss Edith Pierrepoint, and Miss Louisa Warde, Miss Louisa Lane, and Miss Blanche Lane. The solemn service was most impressively performed by the father of the bride and the Venerable the Archdeacon of Coventry, her uncle, and the other officiating clergy were the Rev. J.G.B. White and the Rev. G. Griffiths. The choristers chanted parts of the service, and when the bridal train entered and left the church, the organ pealed forth its solemn sounds. The scene was diversified by a numerous train of flower girls in their bright costume and artistic employment of scattering flowers and bonbons on the path of the bride, the remembrance of whose active benevolence will long be cherished in the hearts of the poor ; whilst the heartfelt blessings of all ranks were earnestly bestowed on one so justly beloved. Mrs. Lane entertained the guests on the occasion with a sumptuous dejèuner. The bridal cakes from Gunter's were particularly admired for beauty of ornament and chasteness of design. The bride and bride groom set off in the afternoon in a carriage and four for Dulton Hall, in Norfolk. We observed among the company present—The Right Hon. the Lord Godolphin and the Hon. Miss Osbornes, the Venerable the Archdeacon of Coventry, Mrs Austen (of Kippington), the Hon. Emma Godolphin Osborne, Colonel and Mrs. Warde, Mr. and Mrs. Montague Bere, Mr. and Mrs. Poynder, Captain and Mrs. Randolph, Messrs, Harrison, Littledale, Sandford, &c.
Describing the cultivated plants of Port Louis in Mauritius, the Rev. William Ellis wrote in 1859:
The rich, delicate, and fragrant Stephanotis floribunda, with which the daughters of our highest aristocracy have garlanded their brows on the bridal morning, here climbs up the lattice-work of the verandahs, and contends for space with the scarlet passion-flower or the pink, waxy and porcelain or gem-like flowers of the Hoya carnosa or the yellow-flowering Allamanda cathartica.The phrase "bridal wreath" is too common for me to find any early uses for the Stephanotis. The first mention of Madagascar Chaplet-flower that I could find was in 1864, in the British and Garden Botany by Leo H Grindon. The book was printed by Cave and Sever, Printers by Steam Power, Hunt's Bank, Manchester.
Stephano'tis floribun'da, the Madagascar Chaplet-flower, (lxx. 4058.) has large umbels of white and long-tubed flowers, the odour of which wafts out when the hothouse door is opened.
The numbers lxx 4058 refer to the issue and plate number
of Stephanotis floribunda in Curtis's Botanical Magazine in 1844.
From Biodiversity Heritage Library
From Biodiversity Heritage Library
The Illustrated London Alamanack for 1866 appears to have recycled content from another publication without attribution. I can't find the original, though they copied one phrase from the Leo H Grindon quote above. They continue with:
As an artificial flower in wax or other material the stephanotis is very successful, and we associate its white, long-tubed, rich-looking flowers with thoughts of bridal veils and orange-blossoms, so frequently does it enter into the composition of bouquets and wreaths on such occasions.In 1868 Samuel Reynolds Hole referred to the flower as "bridal Stephanotis".
In 1869, the Gentleman's Magazine published an article on a fruit and flower farm in Ascot, by the racecourse. The author gave instructions for a, presumably highly fashionable, bouquet:
Bridal bouquets have the pure white gardenia to encircle the orange blossom, stephanotis (which is in bloom for eight months) next to it for the general groundwork, and then Hoteia Japonica, which gives a feathery appearance and breaks up the flatness, white bouvardia, with its star-like variety, white orchids, with their oriental caste, and fairy pink rosebuds set on silver springs, the whole being backed up with fern and myrtle, &c.In 1872, the name Madagascar Chaplet-Flower was used in Life in Neutral Tints; or, Margaret Vernon by Matilda Mary Pollard. The romantic novella had themes of gardening and the improvement of miner's working conditions. The titular protagonist visited a rich man's conservatory after a formal dinner but before dusk.
The odour of the 'Madagascar chaplet-flower' came floating out, mingled with the sweet scents of the marsdenias, and the sloping shelves were one mass of varied bloom.
Also in 1872, Alfred Smee published his book My Garden its plan and culture and wrote that:
Wherever a southern aspect can be afforded, no plant can surpass the Stephanotis floribunda (fig. 601). Large quantities come to Covent Garden Market for wedding bouquets. The plant has a pure white blossom and no garden can dispense with such an exquisite flower.
The plant grows very easily outdoors on the islands of Hawai'i. The Hawai'ian name is pua-male, meaning "wedding flower". It was also called Ka'iulani's flower because it was a favourite flower of the Hawai'ian Princess Ka'iulani (1875-1899). I have not been able to find out exactly when Stephanotis was introduced to Hawai'i. It quickly became a favourite of makers of leis, the traditional garland.
The first mentions I found of stephanotis in Hawai'i in the Library of Congress newspaper archive were in 1880. One mentioned that "The stephanotis is in flower, and makes its presence known by its perfumes." The other recommended Stephanotis among other flowers as formal dinner table decorations.
In Hawai'ian newspapers from 1881 to 1884 there were three mentions of its use at funerals and three of it being used to decorate St Andrew's Cathedral for Easter celebrations. The first two weddings with Stephanotis in the newspapers were in 1885. There were three more weddings with stephanotis reported in 1888 and one more in 1889.§
The first mention of Stephanotis in a newspaper in the continental USA was in the Southern Standard of Columbus, Mississippi on the 24th of May 1851. They published a letter from Wm. Saunders, Gardener to Jno. Hopkins Esq., Clifton Park, Baltimore, dated the 6th of January 1851. He states in the letter that among many plants he was happy to get chilled if they were properly prepared was Stephanotis. However, I am not sure if he had grown Stephanotis in the USA or not. He had only arrived in 1848 and was employed by John Hopkins at some time in 1850. It would surely take longer than that to be sure you had damaged a plant by chilling it. Saunders had previously worked at Kew Gardens.
The next mention was in The Daily Dispatch on the 19th of November 1855. James Guest of the Hollywood Nursery in Richmond, Virginia wished to sell various plants due to moving to a new location. One plant was "a large Green House Climber (Stephanotis florabunda,)".
On the 1st of July 1865 a Mrs TW Ward of Canton, Massachusetts sent some very choice cut flowers of Stephanotis floribunda to a flower show of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society. HH Hunnewell was awarded the first premium for best specimen plant for a Stephanotis floribunda at another Massachusetts Horticultural Society show on the 6th of June 1868.
Instructions for making bouquets were given in the The Evening Star of Washington, DC in the USA on the 15th of July 1874, apparently republished from the Springfield Republican. Stephanotis was mentioned as one of the few flowers you could make into a star pattern without boring the author, as it was by nature star-shaped.
The Essex County Herald of Guildhall, Vermont in the USA published an article on the 7th of November 1874 about the fashions worn at a society wedding in Chicago. On the 20th of October 1874 the wealthy heiress Ida Marie Honoré had married Frederick Dent Grant, the son of the serving President of the USA, Ulysses S. Grant. The bride's dress was:
gracefully looped with orange blossom and stephanotis. The same flowers formed a half wreath on the corsage and completed the ornamentation of the sleeves. ...
...in her hand she carried an elegant fan of natural flowers, tube roses and stephanotis being the principal ones. The other side upon which they were mounted was of white satin with Duchess point.
Hawai'ian lei, in this case made of Stephanotis flowers.
University of Hawai'i at Manoa Library and University of Hawai'i
College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources (CTAHR)
CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
The Royal Horticultural Society includes floradora as one of three common names. Many other websites repeat it but I can't find any history for that name being used for Stephanotis floribunda before 1979, in the Reader's Digest Success with Houseplants.
The musical comedy Florodora became a big hit in London in 1899 where it ran for 455 performances. In New York it ran for another 552 shows. The first act of the musical was set on the fictional island of Florodora in the Philippines. The second act was set in Abercoed Castle in Wales. On Florodora, a perfume was made by the locals from a fictional plant called Florodora. Clearly Florodora is simply Spanishy Latin flor odora, smelly flower. Following the wild success of the musical, in the 1900s and 1910s several plant and florist catalogues carried flowers with varieties called Floradora or Florodora, including dahlias, gladioli and rhododendrons.
In 1903 in the USA, the perfume company Adolph Spiehler had a trade name Florodora. In the same list D.R. Bradley & Son had a trade name Floradora. In 1906 the people of Des Moines in the USA could buy Heywood's Florodora chocolates. In 1913 in London it was Grossmith who had the perfume Florodora.
Perhaps, at some point someone thought the Stephanotis was the perfect exotic stand-in for the fictional Filipino fragrant flower, Florodora.
Another possibility is that the use of the name is one of those terrible confusions caused by relatively uncommon words being used in a context different from their familiar use. Among the many types of garden flowers to have varieties named Floradora or Florodora is a rose bred in the United States of America. The Floradora rose has geranium red flowers, prefers a cool climate and became very popular. Floradora won an All America Award in 1945, soon after its introduction to commercial sales. From a number of online descriptions, it seems to be only slightly fragrant compared to other roses.
How could this lead to confusion? The Floradora rose was a "floribunda" type. Floribunda roses get their name from having lots of flowers. They were also called hybrid polyanthas because they are bred by crossing hybrid tea and polyantha type roses. Of course, the only connection between the floribunda rose "Floradora" and Stephanotis floribunda is the word "floribunda".
Just to add to the coincidence, the Floradora rose was one of the parents of "Queen Elizabeth", the first of a new class of roses that were named "grandiflora" types. As far as I know, this has not caused confusion with Stephanotis grandiflora.
The first use of the name creeping tuberose that I can find was from 1869. The first description of the name Stephanotis floribunda from 1834 likened the fragrance to that of the tuberose. Though similar, I would not say that they were that close. Both are classed as "white flowers" by perfumers, along with gardenia, jasmine and orange blossom.
The waxy, potently fragrant flowers of the tuberose are also white with a long tube. The flowers are star-shaped, though with six rather than five points and are fragrant during the day. The tuberose is native to Mexico. The omixochitl (bone flower) was cultivated and prized for its fragrant flowers by the Aztecs. The roots were used like soap due to their high content of saponins. They were also called amole, a general term used of many soap plants.
The tuberose is now called Agave amica but was previously, and still universally among gardeners and perfumers, known as Polianthes tuberosa. The tuberose looks quite unlike the other agaves as it grows new soft, spineless leaves each year from an underground tuber. Most agaves only flower after many decades of growth. The tuberose flowers every year. This is an another exciting example of the power of genetic testing to clear up relationships between plants that are obscured by dramatic changes in growth habits.
Tuberose Agave amica (née Polianthes tuberosa).
JDP90 (Joydeep) from Wikipedia
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported
The flowers are quite waxy. Also used of other flowers. The related Hoya carnosa was called wax-plant as early as 1827. The flowers of Hoya carnosa look like they were carved from little blocks of red and white or pale pink wax.
Hoya carnosa, waxflower or waxplant.
Cultivated plant in Ohio, USA.
James St. John from Wikimedia Commons
Cultivated plant in Ohio, USA.
James St. John from Wikimedia Commons
Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic
Coined in 1844, this one did not catch on with the public.
The first publication of the name Stephanotis was by the French botanist Louis-Marie Aubert Du Petit-Thouars in 1806, republished in 1811. As an aristocrat he had been exiled from France during the Revolution, passing through Tristan da Cunha, the Cape of Good Hope and Mauritius before ending up in Madagascar in 1795. He was delighted by all the extraordinary new plants he encountered along the way and published books describing many previously unknown plants. He did not describe any species of Stephanotis, just the genus. Concerning the name, he simply stated "Στεϕανωτις, coronaria."
In Ancient Latin, the adjective coronarius meant "of a wreath" or "suitable for garlands". The plural and feminine forms were both coronaria. The word coronaria could also mean "she who makes or sells crowns or garlands". A garland-maker would, however, have been στεφανοποιός (stephanopoios) in Ancient Greek.
In Ancient Latin, the adjective coronarius meant "of a wreath" or "suitable for garlands". The plural and feminine forms were both coronaria. The word coronaria could also mean "she who makes or sells crowns or garlands". A garland-maker would, however, have been στεφανοποιός (stephanopoios) in Ancient Greek.
Ancient Greek στεϕανωτίς (stephanotis) was a feminine adjective meaning "fit for a crown or wreath". Theophrastus (about 371 to 287 BC) used the word in the plural form (στεϕανωτίδες - stephanotides) when referring to myrtles (Myrtus communis) suitable for making fragrant myrtle wreaths at Circeii in Latium, now called Mount Circeo. The myrtle wreath was a sacred symbol of the office of the archons of Athens. The Ancients took their daisy chains very seriously. Both Theophrastus and Theopompus (about 380 to 315 BC) also used the form στεϕανωτρίς (stephanotris).
In 1840, a writer in The Botanist Magazine claimed that the name's origin was:
STEPHANOTIS, from στεφανος, a crown, and ὠτις, derived from ὅς, an ear, in allusion to the auricles of the staminal crown, a meaning however which, if the rules of composition had been followed, ought to have been rendered by Otostephanos.I assume their Ancient Greek dictionary was not as good as the Liddell-Scott-Jones A Greek-English Lexicon published in 1940 and that they had not read Theophrastus. Curtis's Botanical Magazine featured a plate and description of Stephanotis floribunda in 1844, see above. In a footnote, they repeated this explanation of the generic name.
* Στεφανη, a crown and ους, οτος, an ear; from the five ear-like appendages to the staminal crown.
The specific name floribunda comes from a modern coining from the Latin flor (flower) and -bundus a suffix forming emphatic adjectives - so meaning "very flowery". The coinage was probably influenced by the word abundus/abundo meaning luxuriant, copious or overflowing.
We don't know who added the specific name floribunda. The first recorded use is in the first description of the species written by Henri-Antoine Jacques and published in the July 1834 edition of the Annales de la Société d'Horticulture de Paris. For more details see the passage above describing the introduction of the plant to Europe.
We don't know who added the specific name floribunda. The first recorded use is in the first description of the species written by Henri-Antoine Jacques and published in the July 1834 edition of the Annales de la Société d'Horticulture de Paris. For more details see the passage above describing the introduction of the plant to Europe.
Possibly a stephanos? From Erythrai, an Ionian Greek colony
on the west coast of modern day Turkey, 4th century BC.
Musée du Louvre, Paris © 2001 RMN / Hervé Lewandowski
‡ I would not wish to cast doubt on the opinions of
experts from the Louvre but those golden decorations
look like myrtle leaves and berries to me. Too narrow
and pointed to be bay (Laurus nobilis) leaves.
experts from the Louvre but those golden decorations
look like myrtle leaves and berries to me. Too narrow
and pointed to be bay (Laurus nobilis) leaves.
Myrtle berries are also more spherical and
have longer stalks than bay fruits.
The Confusion of Marsdenia floribunda
One name change that has caused a lot of confusion is that of 1899, suggesting Marsdenia floribunda.
Marsdenia floribunda is one of those botanical names that shows how important the names of the authors can be. There can be several plant species that all have the same binomial - the two-word botanical names familiar to all gardeners, even if they can't remember them.
To a botanist each name is a separate entity when considered with its authors. They may all describe the same plant. One might be attached to an inadequate, confusing or just plain wrong description that is automatically regarded as invalid. If the botanist looking into the case is lucky, the name is also attached to a dried, pressed or alcohol-pickled herbarium specimen to prove what was actually meant by the description. That is how the great Linnaeus got away with his irritatingly sketchy descriptions. He had a huge herbarium.
The authors are designated by the abbreviations after the binomial name. In this case, Marsdenia floribunda is attached to two different species of plants. Neither of those plants are now known by that name, both have an earlier name that botanists have now accepted as currently correct.
The name Marsdenia floribunda (Brongn.) Schltr. has "Brongn." in brackets because that was the original author of the original name and description on which the changed name was based when it was published in 1899. Stephanotis floribunda Brongn. was the name and description that Adolphe Brongniart published in 1837. The abbreviation after the brackets, Schltr., is that of the author of the new combination that retained the specific name floribunda but changed the genus to Marsdenia, published by Rudolphus Schlechter in 1899.
To make it clear, all of the last paragraph is about the plant now called Stephanotis floribunda Jacques.
Marsdenia floribunda (E.Mey.) N.E.Br. has "E.Mey." in brackets because that was the original author of the original name and description on which the changed name was based when it was published in 1903. Dregea floribunda E.Mey. was the name and description that Ernst Meyer published in 1838. The abbreviation after the brackets, N.E.Br., is that of the author of the new combination that retained the specific name floribunda but changed the genus to Marsdenia, published by Nicholas Edward Brown in 1903 as a casual aside. He published it properly in 1909.
To make it clear, all of the last paragraph is about the plant now called Dregea floribunda E.Mey. This plant has its own old, alternative names that are also now ignored.
The same Rudolphus Schlechter who named Marsdenia floribunda (Brongn.) Schltr. decided in 1914 that confusion with Marsdenia floribunda (E.Mey.) N.E.Br. should be avoided. So he renamed Dregea floribunda to Marsdenia dregea (Harv.) Schltr. This does not seem to have helped reduce the confusion.
The confusion was not helped by the fact that Stephanotis floribunda is one of the most famous plants in the world. Dregea floribunda does not even have a photo of the living plant online as far as I can tell. The only botanical illustration I could find (Natal Plants, 1899) had an observation from Nicholas Edward Brown in Flora Capensis in 1909 - the fruit was correct but the flowering plant in the drawing was a different member of the same family, Gymnena sylvestre.
There are 2 herbarium specimens of Dregea floribunda at Kew (with three entries in their database each). You can see quite clearly that the plant is similar to Stephanotis but quite different. The leaves are more oval and flimsy. The flowers have an insignificant tube and are smaller, though quite abundant. The fruit have four very distinct pleated flanges running from end to end. You can also see that generations of botanists have scribbled their opinions all over the sheets.
Stephanotis floribunda was only found wild by the far south and south-east coast of Madagascar. Dregea floribunda was found wild in the far south and south-east on the mainland of Africa, in Mozambique, Swaziland and the Cape and KwaZulu-Natal Provinces of South Africa.
If you think this is all very bewildering, you would be right.
Even the Missouri Botanical Garden professional botanists
got it wrong on their website.
Even the Missouri Botanical Garden professional botanists
got it wrong on their website.
The Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle in Paris also got confused by this similarity of names (homonyms - meaning the same name for different things). They put a herbarium specimen clearly labelled on the sheet as Marsdenia floribunda N.E. Br. under Stephanotis thouarsii. Though the handwriting does look more like Marsdenia floribunda R.E!
Bu. That sheet is of a plant collected in Kenya near the border with
Tanzania. That is a little more northerly than Kew Gardens have for the
distribution of Dregea floribunda, which stops at Mozambique. The plant does look very like a Dregea so it could be a related species or an unrecognised outlier of Dregea floribunda.
The idea that the name should change to Marsdenia floribunda (C.Morren) Schltr. or Stephanotis floribunda C.Morren was due to a misreading of the description in Charles Morren's Belgian journal, Horticulteur Belge, journal des Jardiniers et Amateurs. It was clearly marked in there as being a reprint from Le Bon Jardinier 1835. The newly-found first description from 1834 now takes precedence over all of these. So, if it were decided again that the plant is a Marsdenia, the correct name would be Marsdenia floribunda (Jacques) Schltr. despite the name having been based by Schlechter on Brongniart's description.
I am just happy that it is not going to be this, which is the most confusing name of all the possibilities. Hopefully, the taxonomy will stabilise and the name will be accepted generally as Stephanotis floribunda Jacques.
UPDATE
In March 2022, a paper was published with a major revision of the section Marsdeniae and the species Dregea floribunda E.Mey was moved into the genus Stephanotis. It could not be named Stephanotis floribunda, obviously, so a totally new specific name was coined. It is now Stephanotis ernstmeyeri
S.Reuss, Liede & Meve. I am sure that will avoid all further
confusion. (For those who have somehow got this far into this article without being a
botanist, I should note that this remark is sarcasm - confusion always
multiplies.) For more details and a picture of the new lectotype
herbarium specimen, see above.
Alternative botanical names
The various other names suggested by botanists in addition to those above just added to the complications but were mostly ignored.
Isaura allicia
The various other names suggested by botanists in addition to those above just added to the complications but were mostly ignored.
Isaura allicia
The name Commerson had coined in the early 1770s was Isaura allicia.
Unfortunately, I could not find any explanation of the generic name Isaura. The fact that the name was obsolete before it was published meant that nobody really cared.
There are several possibilities I can see for it.
There is a small Madagascan community called Isahara about 150km (90 miles) north-east of Tolañaro and 24km (15 miles) inland from the sea. That is within the present-day distribution of Stephanotis floribunda.
Isaura is used in Portuguese-speaking and Spanish-speaking countries as a name for women and Isauro for men. Could that have been the name of the Mozambican child slave purchased by Commerson?
Those Iberian names came from the towns of Old Isaura and New Isaura which were the capitals of the Isauria tribe. They lived in what is now the south of Turkey. The tribe was known for being rebellious. They were a thorn in Rome's side from the 1st century BC to the 5th century AD. I can't see any connection there.
The only other option I can see is from two ancient Greek words. The word from which we get the prefix iso- is the ancient Greek ἴσος (isos) meaning "equal". When used before a vowel in Greek the prefix loses the ο, becoming ἴσ-. The word αὔρα (aura) in Greek can mean "cool breeze" or "fresh air of morning" or "vapours like those from incense". This last use of the word would be familiar to anyone who knew the play Birds by Aristophanes in the original Greek. Not so common now but the old botanists often had a little Classical education.
So Isaura could be ἴσαὔρα, "equal to the scent of incense". Except that I just made it up. Though Commerson could have made it up as easily.
Unfortunately, I could not find any explanation of the generic name Isaura. The fact that the name was obsolete before it was published meant that nobody really cared.
There are several possibilities I can see for it.
There is a small Madagascan community called Isahara about 150km (90 miles) north-east of Tolañaro and 24km (15 miles) inland from the sea. That is within the present-day distribution of Stephanotis floribunda.
Isaura is used in Portuguese-speaking and Spanish-speaking countries as a name for women and Isauro for men. Could that have been the name of the Mozambican child slave purchased by Commerson?
Those Iberian names came from the towns of Old Isaura and New Isaura which were the capitals of the Isauria tribe. They lived in what is now the south of Turkey. The tribe was known for being rebellious. They were a thorn in Rome's side from the 1st century BC to the 5th century AD. I can't see any connection there.
The only other option I can see is from two ancient Greek words. The word from which we get the prefix iso- is the ancient Greek ἴσος (isos) meaning "equal". When used before a vowel in Greek the prefix loses the ο, becoming ἴσ-. The word αὔρα (aura) in Greek can mean "cool breeze" or "fresh air of morning" or "vapours like those from incense". This last use of the word would be familiar to anyone who knew the play Birds by Aristophanes in the original Greek. Not so common now but the old botanists often had a little Classical education.
So Isaura could be ἴσαὔρα, "equal to the scent of incense". Except that I just made it up. Though Commerson could have made it up as easily.
The specific name allicia is from the Latin verb allicio, to draw to one's self, to attract. From which comes our rarely-used English word allicient, meaning "enticing" or "attractive".
The Latin word was frequently used by the notorious Roman windbag Cicero but seldom by anyone else. I assume that "allicient" is much the same for English speakers. The science fiction author David Brin used the word in The Uplift War in 1987. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, someone else also used it, earlier in the same century.
A typo in a list in 1841 seemed to suggest that the plant was like garlic - Isaura alliacea.
The Latin word was frequently used by the notorious Roman windbag Cicero but seldom by anyone else. I assume that "allicient" is much the same for English speakers. The science fiction author David Brin used the word in The Uplift War in 1987. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, someone else also used it, earlier in the same century.
A typo in a list in 1841 seemed to suggest that the plant was like garlic - Isaura alliacea.
Ceropegia stephanotis
Another suggested name change to Ceropegia stephanotis in 1820 allied the plant to the Ceropegia genus, also in the Asclepiadaceae, some of which are popular houseplants. This was also rejected as, though similar, they are not closely-related. However, you can see the thinking. Especially when you see the peculiar Ceropegia crassifolia that I grew once. Many of the flowers opened fully. Most Ceropegia flowers keep the tips of the petals joined and only open slots along the sides, making a pretty lantern-like shape.
The usual form of Ceropegia flower, with petals joined at the tips.
Open Ceropegia crassifolia flower.
Stephanotis isaura
In 1844, another suggestion was Stephanotis isaura. Clearly, they were hoping to keep Commerson's name in some way. This was rejected as they were just describing a variety of Stephanotis floribunda, and listed both as valid in their descriptions.
In 1844, another suggestion was Stephanotis isaura. Clearly, they were hoping to keep Commerson's name in some way. This was rejected as they were just describing a variety of Stephanotis floribunda, and listed both as valid in their descriptions.
Stephanotis odoratissima
Asclepias odoratissima was published as a name in 1820 but without a description of the plant's characteristics. This means that the name is meaningless to taxonomists, despite the fact that we all know which plant it was. The description by Brongniart in 1837 mentions that he rejected the specific name odoratissima because it may not have been distinguishing enough among the Stephanotis as it would have been among the generally unscented species of Asclepias. Clearly Brongniart had not stood next to an Asclepias syriaca on a warm summer evening and smelt its delightful fragrance. In fact, Brongniart had described his only two other species of Stephanotis from dried, pressed herbarium specimens and had no idea whether the flowers had a fragrance. They do, but that is not the point.
There are plenty of specific names that are not very specific to the plant they describe. For example, Salvia albiflora, the "white-flowered sage". Out of the 986 species currently accepted by Kew's Plant List, there are a lot that have white flowers. I haven't counted them all but there are a lot, trust me.
Stephanotis allicia
You would think that, as allicia was the first specific name published for the Madagascar jasmine with a description by over 20 years, that there would have been some mention of the possibility of naming the plant Stephanotis allicia or Marsdenia allicia. For some reason that has been ignored by the botanical authorities and has never been published. The only mention on the entire internet seems to be on the German Wikipedia page for the Kranzschlinge (garland-loop). The Wikipedia page gives the World Checklist of Selected Plant Families as the reference for this. That entry is no longer on the WCSP website. Presumably, since the 10th of November 2017, they decided that adding unpublished names would just complicate an already complicated history.
This is the end, apart from a few references. I will leave you with a totally out-of-context quote brought up in a web search for Stephanotis scientific articles:
References for botanical and Malagasy names of Stephanotis floribunda:
de Flacourt, E & Allibert, C Histoire de la Grand Isle Madagascar, Nouvelle édition (Karthala, Paris 2007) 2nd Edition: 208
Du Petit-Thouars, L-MA Mélanges de Botanique et de Voyages (Bertrand, Paris 1811) p.11 Genus 35 Originally published 1806.
Lamarck, J-BPAdeM & Poiret, JLM Encyclopédie méthodique. Botanique. Supplement (Agasse, Paris 1813) 3: 185
Bréon, N Catalogue des plantes cultivées aux jardins botanique et de naturalisation de l'ile Bourbon (Saint-Denis, Ile Bourbon 1820) 28
Roemer, JJ & Schultes JA Systema vegetabilium (Cottae, Stuttgart 1820) 6: 4
Bréon, N Catalogue des plantes cultivées aux jardins botanique et de naturalisation de l'ile Bourbon (Saint-Denis, Ile Bourbon 1825) 35
Jacques, H-A Annales de la Société d'Horticulture de Paris, et Journal Spécial de l'État et des Progrès du Jardinage (Bureau de la Société d'Horticulture et Chez Mme Huzard, Paris 1834) 15(83, July): 28-29
Jacques, H-A? Ed. Poiteau, PA & Levêque de Vilmorin, P-P-A Le Bon Jardinier, Almanach pour L'Année 1835 (Audot, Paris 1834?) 635
Jacques, H-A Revue Horticole, Journal des Jardiniers et Amateurs (Audot, Paris; Périchon, Brussels 1835) 2: 538
Anonymous Ed. Morren, C Horticulteur Belge, journal des Jardiniers et Amateurs (Stapleaux, Brussels 1835) 2(Jan-Feb): 248
Neumann Annales de Flore et de Pomone (Rousselon, Paris 1836) 4(July): 311-312
Brongniart, Adolphe Annales des Sciences Naturelles; Botanique (Crochard, Paris 1837) sér. 2, 7: 30
de Candolle, AP Prodromus systematis naturalis regni vegetabilis (Fortin, Masson et Sociorum, Paris 1844) 8: 620
de La Beaujardière, J-M Malagasy Dictionary and Encyclopedia of Madagascar http://malagasyword.org/bins/homePage Accessed 25/01/2020
Asclepias odoratissima was published as a name in 1820 but without a description of the plant's characteristics. This means that the name is meaningless to taxonomists, despite the fact that we all know which plant it was. The description by Brongniart in 1837 mentions that he rejected the specific name odoratissima because it may not have been distinguishing enough among the Stephanotis as it would have been among the generally unscented species of Asclepias. Clearly Brongniart had not stood next to an Asclepias syriaca on a warm summer evening and smelt its delightful fragrance. In fact, Brongniart had described his only two other species of Stephanotis from dried, pressed herbarium specimens and had no idea whether the flowers had a fragrance. They do, but that is not the point.
There are plenty of specific names that are not very specific to the plant they describe. For example, Salvia albiflora, the "white-flowered sage". Out of the 986 species currently accepted by Kew's Plant List, there are a lot that have white flowers. I haven't counted them all but there are a lot, trust me.
Stephanotis allicia
You would think that, as allicia was the first specific name published for the Madagascar jasmine with a description by over 20 years, that there would have been some mention of the possibility of naming the plant Stephanotis allicia or Marsdenia allicia. For some reason that has been ignored by the botanical authorities and has never been published. The only mention on the entire internet seems to be on the German Wikipedia page for the Kranzschlinge (garland-loop). The Wikipedia page gives the World Checklist of Selected Plant Families as the reference for this. That entry is no longer on the WCSP website. Presumably, since the 10th of November 2017, they decided that adding unpublished names would just complicate an already complicated history.
We believe that the genus Stephanotis is best.
de Flacourt, E & Allibert, C Histoire de la Grand Isle Madagascar, Nouvelle édition (Karthala, Paris 2007) 2nd Edition: 208
Du Petit-Thouars, L-MA Mélanges de Botanique et de Voyages (Bertrand, Paris 1811) p.11 Genus 35 Originally published 1806.
Lamarck, J-BPAdeM & Poiret, JLM Encyclopédie méthodique. Botanique. Supplement (Agasse, Paris 1813) 3: 185
Bréon, N Catalogue des plantes cultivées aux jardins botanique et de naturalisation de l'ile Bourbon (Saint-Denis, Ile Bourbon 1820) 28
Roemer, JJ & Schultes JA Systema vegetabilium (Cottae, Stuttgart 1820) 6: 4
Bréon, N Catalogue des plantes cultivées aux jardins botanique et de naturalisation de l'ile Bourbon (Saint-Denis, Ile Bourbon 1825) 35
Jacques, H-A Annales de la Société d'Horticulture de Paris, et Journal Spécial de l'État et des Progrès du Jardinage (Bureau de la Société d'Horticulture et Chez Mme Huzard, Paris 1834) 15(83, July): 28-29
Jacques, H-A? Ed. Poiteau, PA & Levêque de Vilmorin, P-P-A Le Bon Jardinier, Almanach pour L'Année 1835 (Audot, Paris 1834?) 635
Jacques, H-A Revue Horticole, Journal des Jardiniers et Amateurs (Audot, Paris; Périchon, Brussels 1835) 2: 538
Anonymous Ed. Morren, C Horticulteur Belge, journal des Jardiniers et Amateurs (Stapleaux, Brussels 1835) 2(Jan-Feb): 248
Neumann Annales de Flore et de Pomone (Rousselon, Paris 1836) 4(July): 311-312
Brongniart, Adolphe Annales des Sciences Naturelles; Botanique (Crochard, Paris 1837) sér. 2, 7: 30
de Candolle, AP Prodromus systematis naturalis regni vegetabilis (Fortin, Masson et Sociorum, Paris 1844) 8: 620
de La Beaujardière, J-M Malagasy Dictionary and Encyclopedia of Madagascar http://malagasyword.org/bins/homePage Accessed 25/01/2020
Muséum national de Histoire naturelle, Paris (France) Collection: Vascular plants (P), https://science.mnhn.fr/taxon/genus/stephanotis Accessed January 2020
Stephanotis floribunda specimens:
1648-1654 MNHN-P-P03855647 de Flacourt - Common Name: Latac anghomme lahe
1770 MNHN-P-P00624122 Commerson - Botanical Name: Isaura allicia
1834 MNHN-P-P00624123 Bréon - Botanical Name: Asclepias odoratissima
1834 MNHN-P-P06590887 Brongniart - Botanical Name: Stephanotis floribunda
1891? MNHN-P-P04256538 Cloisel - Common Name: Bokabé
1891? MNHN-P-P04256541 Cloisel - Common Name: Boukabé
1956 MNHN-P-P04256504 Réserves Naturelles - Common Name: Belataky
1956 MNHN-P-P04256505 Réserves Naturelles - Common Name: Vahi Karabo
1958 MNHN-P-P04256506 Réserves Naturelles - Common Name: Lata Kombilaly
2006 MNHN-P-P01155023 Ramison - Common Name: Vahivoraka
2012 MNHN-P-P02290039 Ratovoson - Common Name: Vahiboka
Stephanotis grandiflora:
1951 MNHN-P-P04256575 Réserves Naturelles - Common Name: Vah[?]kany, Vahintsaikany?
1954 MNHN-P-P04256573 Réserves Naturelles - Common Name: Vahimakany
1958 MNHN-P-P04256506 Réserves Naturelles - Common Name: Vahimaukany
1994 MNHN-P-P04256529 Gautier & Derleth - Common Name: Vahimatehona
Stephanotis thouarsii:
2014 MNHN-P-P01047046 Randrianaivo & Chrysostome - Common Name: Vahimova (far north)
Tropicos
Stephanotis grandiflora
1994 MO-166031 Gautier & Derleth - Common Name: Vahimatehona
2012 MO-2739216 Ludovic - Common Names: Ambironaombilahy, Latakanaombilahy
Stephanotic acid
ChemSpider CSID:8779510, http://www.chemspider.com/Chemical-Structure.8779510.html (accessed 10:28, Feb 7, 2020)
1880
"The stephanotis is in flower, and makes its presence known by its perfumes." The Hawaiian gazette April 28, 1880
Among other flowers as (formal) dinner table decorations. The Hawaiian gazette December 08, 1880
1881
Easter The Pacific commercial advertiser April 23, 1881
Funeral The Hawaiian gazette October 12, 1881, Supplement
1882
Easter The Hawaiian gazette April 12, 1882
Funeral The Pacific commercial advertiser June 17, 1882, Page 2
1884
Easter Saturday press April 19, 1884
Funeral The Hawaiian gazette November 05, 1884
1885
Wedding The Hawaiian gazette February 04, 1885
"... many beautiful floral decorations, roses, stephanotis, honeysuckle and other flowers."
Wedding Daily Honolulu press October 05, 1885
"From the arch hung a beautiful floral basket with trailing vines of stephanotis."
1887
Funeral The Hawaiian gazette March 01, 1887
1888
Wedding The Pacific commercial advertiser April 11, 1888
Wedding The Pacific commercial advertiser May 01, 1888
Wedding (in Scotland?) The Hawaiian gazette December 18, 1888
Funeral The Hawaiian gazette May 22, 1888
1889
Wedding The Daily bulletin September 18, 1889
Easter The Daily bulletin April 22, 1889
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