By Leslie Cox; Friday, February 14, 2014

Oh, my bleeding heart! They have done it again! The scientists, I mean. They have gone and changed the name of another plant.

This time they are messing around with an old garden favourite…the bleeding heart. That lovely, roll-off-your-tongue name, Dicentra, is no more.

Try Lamprocapnos on for size. Trust me…it is harder to remember how to spell too.

Actually, I did some checking when I came across the article informing me of this name  change. Way back when, bleeding heart was originally assigned to the Fumaria genus by Linnaeus in 1753. By 1797 it had been moved to the Capnorchis genus. From there it became a Dicentra, then a Diclytra, a Dieltra and a Eucapnos before winding up as Dicentra once again. Dizzying!

Enter the era of genetics and DNA. Thankfully. Time to settle bleeding heart’s parentage once and for all. And guess what? In 1997 they discovered our bleeding heart is more closely related to the other seven species in the Lamprocapnos genus than to the other six genus that have foster-cared it up to now. Yet one more name change.

I guess it is nice to finally be getting things set straight but even the Royal Horticultural Society was reluctant to give up bleeding heart’s Dicentra designation. It took them until 2006 to make the name change official. And you will notice the nurseries are even more reluctant to give up on Dicentra as evidenced by their refusal to make new name tags.

At least we have the common name, bleeding heart, to fall back on. But don’t stop there.

As many Latin names as Dicentra has used up, it has even more common names attached to its stems. Dutchman’s breeches and chinaman’s breeches are likely familiar to many gardeners but I found a few that I didn’t know…lock and keys, lyre flower, seal flower and my personal favourite, lady in the bath. Luxurious. But has anyone ever heard of Dicentra being called Venus’ car before? Can’t figure that simile out.

And there is one more common name…valentine flower. This would be why some florists are want to use this flower in bouquets for Valentine’s Day.

Here’s my question: how does the sweetheart recipient know the delicate heart-shaped flowers were meant as pure valentines…not to signify her heart was about to be broken and bleed?

Also…where are bleeding hearts in bloom for Valentine’s Day? Looking through my photos…all of our various Dicentra, oops! I mean Lamprocapnos species, do not come into bloom until the end of April, early May. Definitely too late for my Valentine bouquet.