as the season advances.Garden Shrubs and their HistoriesAlice M. Coats It is apparent from the above that the common name Elisha's tears falls into the same category (of jocular corruptions of the scientific names of plants into common names more congenial to rural British taste) as Aunt Eliza (for Antholyza) and Sally-my-handsome for Mesembryanthemum. It is also testament to a greater familiarity with the names of biblical figures - such as the Old Testament prophets - on the part of Britons of the nineteenth century, when compared to their counterparts in the twenty-first. Affiliation within Caprifoliaceae The results of the genetic testing undertaken by Zhang et al. have revealed that Leycesteria is most closely related to the genera Triosteum (common name - "horse gentians" / Chinese 莛子藨属 tíng zi biāo shǔ) and Heptacodium (Chinese common name 七子花 qī zi huā = "seven son flower"). Of these, only Triosteum has fruits that are berries, the fruits of Heptacodium being dry capsules. These three genera belong to the subfamily Caprifolioideae of the honeysuckle family Caprifoliaceae, the other two genera in the subfamily being Lonicera, the (true) honeysuckles and Symphoricarpos, the snowberries. Description It is found to be a hardy evergreen, requiring a considerable degree of moisture, and a situation slightly sheltered and shaded, though the colour of its bracts would be most probably be heightened by exposure to solar light. Propagation is effected by cuttings or layers.Joseph PaxtonPaxton's Magazine of Botany Volume VI (1839) A deciduous, sometimes evergreen, half-woody, shrub-like plant (intermediate between a shrub and a herbaceous perennial) with young stems that are soft, hollow and upright in various shades of green, salmon pink, maroon and purple, in height, which may only last for 2–5 years before collapsing and being replaced by new stems from the roots. Mature specimens, however, may have short, truly woody trunks clothed in rough, grey bark at the base. The leaves are opposite, dark green and usually cordate long and broad, with an entire, wavy or even deeply-lobed margin and often an extended drip tip (commonly an adaptation to a wet climate). The flowers (bee-pollinated) are produced on long pendulous racemes; each flower is small, white, pale pink or rarely deep purplish pink, subtended by a purplish-pink bract, terminating - like the leaves - in a drip tip. The fruit is a berry, hard and deep pink when unripe, and fragile, soft (easily burst) and a