Are you ready to continue to the Latin series?  B is going to go quickly — unless you can spark me with another Latin ‘B’ — Buchananii is the only one I can come up with.

Buchananii is one of the Latin naming conventions for a person — namely the person who discovered the plants.   John Buchananii was a Scottish pattern designer who sailed to New Zealand in 1852, bought a farm near Dunedin and  began collecting and recording the unfamiliar native flora.   His pattern making skills served him well as a botanist and he spent many years on expeditions around New Zealand collecting, drawing and documenting plants.

There are hundreds of plants — many of which are garden worthy favorites that bear the Buchananii name — one of my favorites is Carex Buchananii.   I set up a pinterest board with a bunch of ‘buchananii’ plants for you to see — but you really must click on Brachystelma buchananii – it is one of the coolest plants I have seen in a while.

It should be noted however that not all plants with the name buchananii are for John Buchanan — there were other notable Buchanan’s in the botanical world.  Charles Buchanan is the namesake for Salvia Buchananii because he raised the rare plant from seed he collected in Mexico City.

Both images of Newtonia buchananii (a tree I would die to grow!) from from zimbabweflora.co.zw.