Thomas Hoy, Where Hoya Took Root

The man whose name you say every day. Before hoya was a plant, it was Thomas Hoy, a working gardener at Syon House who served three Dukes of Northumberland across forty years. In 1810, botanist Robert Brown named an entire genus for him. This week: the gardener's life in the 1780s, the great estate across the river from Kew, and why Brown gave the genus to the cultivator. A species epithet is a thank-you note. A genus is a monument.Names Have Roots tells the stories behind hoya names. New episodes every Tuesday.