Wisteria at the Palace

Here's a little snap of the Wisteria outside the Palace of Holyroodhouse.

There are two noted attributions for the name Wisteria. One, that the botanist Thomas Nuttall named the genus Wisteria in honour of Dr. Caspar Wistar (1761 - 1818) ? some call it Wistaria but the misspelling is conserved under the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature.

The other, that the genus was named after Charles Jones Wister, Sr., of Grumblethorpe, the grandson of merchant and wine importer John Wister. Daniel Wister, Charles's father, joined with Samuel Miles and Robert Morris to underwrite the voyage of the American commercial vessel Empress of China. On board the ship was the vine that would later bear the Wister name.

Wisteria species are used as food plants by the larvae of some Lepidoptera species including brown-tail. It is also an extremely popular ornamental plant in China and Japan.

P.S. Wisteria is also my favourite plant!