Aubrietia

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A low-growing trailing garden plant of the cress family, bearing clusters of small purple, pink or violet flowers in spring
2. A spreading rock garden perennial prized for its mounds of violet blooms that cascade over walls and edges
3. Ornamental flowering ground cover with small four-petaled blossoms in shades of purple, often grown in rock gardens and borders

Etymology: Claude Aubriet was a French botanical illustrator, and his name ended up on a flowering plant he never grew. Aubriet (1665–1742) spent much of his career drawing plants and animals for the French royal collections and for naturalists, and the Swiss-born botanist Joseph Pitton de Tournefort honoured him by naming a genus after him. That genus, Aubrieta, took its name from Aubriet's surname, and the English word "aubrietia" is simply that scientific name carried over into everyday gardening use. The plant is a low, mat-forming perennial, and its name works the way many plant names do: a surname is turned into a Latinised genus name, and the common English form keeps that origin. Gardeners often know it as a spring rock-garden plant that spills over walls in purple, pink, or white, so the name describes a person rather than the flower's appearance.

Synonyms: aubretia, aubrieta