Names Have Roots

Phil Achleman
  • 5.0 (3)
  • Home & Garden

Every hoya is named for a real person. Each week, Phil Achleman tells the story behind the name: the collectors, botanists, gardeners, and obsessives whose lives got attached to a plant. Hoya kerrii, Hoya clemensiorum, Hoya meredithii, and the gardener whose name became the entire genus. A houseplant podcast from Gathering Moss. New episodes every Tuesday.

Episodes

  1. 9h ago

    Christine Burton: An Unfinished Portrait

    She edited the hoya world's journal for twenty three years. Botanists trusted her with the record of an entire genus. A species carries her name to this day. And there is not one confirmed photograph of her anywhere we can find. This is the story of Christine Burton and Hoya burtoniae, the velvet leaf hoya. In 1979 Burton founded the Hoya Society International in Georgia and became editor of its journal, The Hoyan. For more than two decades, if you grew hoyas and wanted to know what you actually had, her pages were where the answers lived. Then the society split in two. Her journal ended. And Burton herself began slipping out of the record she had worked so hard to keep. No reliable obituary. A book that may or may not exist. Most issues of The Hoyan almost impossible to find. Growers still meet her plant tangled up with Hoya tsangii and DS 70 on labels today. So we went looking, through society records and surviving journal issues, to the 1990 day Dale Kloppenburg named Hoya burtoniae in her honor. What is documented, what is only reported, and where the trail honestly ends. The episode closes with a personal October memory: Phil remembers his mother, Diane. Names Have Roots tells the stories of the people behind hoya names, every Tuesday. Follow the show so the next name finds you. This Friday, October 23, brings a special episode, the first one about someone who is still living. Growing Hoya burtoniae at home? Tell me what yours is doing this fall. 0:00 The specimen that waited eighty years · 2:27 Christine Burton: An Unfinished Portrait · 2:48 A hoya sold as globulosa · 4:30 February 12, 1979: a society is born · 7:05 More than an editor · 14:55 The split · 18:49 The journal ends, the writing moves online · 22:55 The journal that vanished · 25:53 The name that stayed in the record · 31:10 A word for October · 31:37 Every name has a story

    Christine Burton: An Unfinished Portrait

  2. Oct 13

    Hoya anncajanoae: The Roots Ate Ana Left Behind

    Grower sites say Hoya anncajanoae smells like caramel and drips nectar. This episode is about the woman inside that long name. Mary Ann Cajano, known as Ana, was a herbarium technician at the University of the Philippines Los Baños who looked after more than seventy thousand specimens. Four living things were named for her: two hoyas, an orchid, and a cockroach. Phil follows her paper trail from a Rafflesia description in 2006, through the Laguna hillside collection that became the type specimen in November of 2006, to the orchid whose authors wrote that she passed away on the morning of its discovery. One word in the title trips people up. Ate is pronounced AH teh. It is not the past tense of eat. In the Philippines it is what you call an older sister, as a mark of respect. Names Have Roots releases every Tuesday. Every hoya has a name. Every name has a story. Let's find the next one.

    Hoya anncajanoae: The Roots Ate Ana Left Behind

  3. Oct 6

    Thomas Hoy: Where Hoya Took Root

    Who is hoya named after? Thomas Hoy, a working gardener at Syon House who served three Dukes of Northumberland across forty years. In 1810, botanist Robert Brown named an entire genus for him. The man whose name you say every day. This week: the gardener's life in the 1780s, the great estate across the river from Kew, and why Brown gave the genus to the cultivator. A species epithet is a thank you note. A genus is a monument. Names Have Roots tells the stories behind hoya names. New episodes every Tuesday.

    Thomas Hoy: Where Hoya Took Root

  4. Sep 29

    Hoya kerrii: The Roots He Couldn't Leave

    Who was Hoya kerrii named after? Arthur Francis George Kerr, an Irish doctor whose life became deeply rooted in Siam, now Thailand. Most people know Hoya kerrii as the heart leaf plant sold around Valentine's Day. Behind that familiar leaf: Phil follows Kerr from Trinity College Dublin to Chiang Mai and Doi Suthep, where he collected the specimen that William Grant Craib later described as Hoya kerrii. Physician, botanist, husband, father, wartime veteran. And one important moment the records leave frustratingly undocumented.

    Hoya kerrii: The Roots He Couldn't Leave

  5. Sep 22

    Hoya clemensiorum: The Rooted Wanderers

    Who was Hoya clemensiorum named after? Two people, not one. Joseph Clemens was an Army chaplain who followed his wife Mary into the field, from Hawaii to the Philippines to China to British North Borneo. When he died on a jungle trail in New Guinea in 1936, Mary wrote it down on a herbarium label and kept collecting alone, adding roughly fourteen thousand more specimens before she was done. This episode is their story, and how a hoya lost its name and got it back. Full writeup: https://gatheringmoss.shop/blogs/hoya-names/hoya-clemensiorum-the-rooted-wanderers

    Hoya clemensiorum: The Rooted Wanderers

  6. Sep 16

    Prologue

    Hey! I'd love to hear your thoughts, send me a voice note. Why am I doing this?

    Prologue

  7. Sep 16

    Hoya Meredithii: Roots of Controversy

    Who was Hoya meredithii named after? York Meredith, a plantsman of Dee Why, New South Wales. And there is a real, credentialed challenge to the plant's own name that it stood up to. Updated September 2026: an earlier version of this episode included a quote I could not verify. It has been corrected, and the audio above is the fixed version. The plant's story turned out to be better than the first draft anyway. Full written version, with sources: https://gatheringmoss.shop/blogs/hoya-names/the-plantsman-of-dee-why

    Hoya Meredithii: Roots of Controversy
  • 7 Episodes

Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
3 Ratings

About

Every hoya is named for a real person. Each week, Phil Achleman tells the story behind the name: the collectors, botanists, gardeners, and obsessives whose lives got attached to a plant. Hoya kerrii, Hoya clemensiorum, Hoya meredithii, and the gardener whose name became the entire genus. A houseplant podcast from Gathering Moss. New episodes every Tuesday.

Information

  • Creator
    Phil Achleman
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    7
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Phil Achleman
  • Show Website
    Names Have Roots

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