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One day,  a leaf falls off your favourite plant. Maybe you knocked it a little too hard, and the petiole snapped... so, just out of sheer morbid curiosity, you stick it in a jar of water and hope beyond hope that it'll grow into a new baby plant. From here, there are three possibilities, and what will happen depends entirely on what species of plant we're talking about here... because such is the magic of leaf cuttings. Situation 1 Most plants require what is called meristem tissue to propagate from a cutting of any kind. This special tissue can grow and specialize into...

This is, honestly, my favourite thing about plants: diving headfirst into weird taxonomy things. You'll often see people refer to these plants with both names, with either name interchangeably, or as "Hoya latifolia (formerly macrophylla)" -- so what's the deal? Are they the same species, and which name is correct? Here's what happened. Two different scientists named two different, but extremely similar, hoya species "Hoya macrophylla" (meaning big-leaved) around the same time, not realizing what happened. When someone finally realized that they were two different species, the second one was renamed latifolia (also meaning big-leaved). Some sites I've found have...