Lespedeza’s botanical twist: The story behind a name born of historical error
This botanical history post was featured on The Daily Gardener podcast:
November 20, 1933
Dearest reader,
On this day, the Knoxville Journal reported a deliciously peculiar twist in botanical history under the headline, “Department Botanists Agree Too Late to Change — Lespedeza was named in Error.”
Picture it: a misunderstanding that began in 1803, persisted for over a century, and ultimately charmed its way into permanence.
Lespedeza (pronounced “Les-pah-dee-zah”) — a genus of some forty dear and delicate members of the pea family, more romantically known as bush clovers — owes its name to French botanist André Michaux.
In seeking to show gratitude for permission to explore Florida’s flora for France, Michaux bestowed the name in honor of Governor Lespedez… or so he thought.
Alas, modern detective work by P. L. Ricker of the United States Department of Agriculture revealed a hitch most botanists could only sigh over. Ricker scoured Florida’s early records, only to discover no governor by the name Lespedez had ever existed. Instead, in 1788, the actual governor was named — quite unmistakably — Cespedes.
Thus, a slip of the pen (or a misprint in the annals of botanical naming) transformed Cespedes into Lespedeza, enshrining an error as immortally as any plant pressed between herbarium sheets.
And here lies the most tantalizing part: botanists agreed that to amend the name now would invite even greater confusion with Cespedesia — a tropical tree genus named for an esteemed professor of botany, also bearing the name Cespedes.
Lespedeza, born from a mistake, was allowed to keep her title. How very like a garden rose mislabeled in youth, yet loved all the same into maturity.
It stirs the question, dear reader: how many names in our gardens are echoes of error?
Does it matter if the thing itself remains beautiful?
In the stately order of plant taxonomy, authority is king — yet here we have proof that even kings can be misheard, and still the kingdom blooms regardless.
So next time you encounter a Lespedeza in blossom, remember her story: a flower born of gratitude, carried aloft by an error, protected by tradition, and cherished entirely because, in gardens as in life, meaning is often less about perfection than about persistence.
