Common names for plants can often create confusion, especially among botanical nerds like myself. The main reason we like to rattle off multi-syllabic Latin names is that there is never any question as to what plant we are talking about. In the case of common names however, many different plants can share similar common names depending on what part of the country one comes from… My point here is that while common names can be misleading, in the case of heaths and heathers, nobody really cares! Not even the nursery professionals.

Now that we are into the heat of the PNW summer, I thought it would be fun to delve into the world of Hibiscus. When most gardeners close their eyes and think of the word Hibiscus, I would be curious to see what picture comes to mind. There are hundreds of…