Of Precisions and Jealousies. Rhodomyrtus tomentosa (Aiton) Hassk., Downy Rose-Myrtle, Taman Botani, Putrajaya, Malaysia

Rana Pipiens has added a photo to the pool:

Here's Downy Rose-Myrtle in the pleasant Botanical Park of Putrajaya, Malaysia. The shrub's a bit neglected - garden workers are more intent on cutting the lawns and leaf-blowing than on caring for the plants - but it still endeavors to blossom prettily.
Our Myrtle is downy, as you can see from the petal edges. Once, in the days of Scotsman William Aiton (1731-1793) and Frenchman Augustin Pyramus de Candolle (1778-1841), it was still called merely 'Myrtus'. But sharp-eyed and precise Justus Karl Hasskarl (1811-1894), attached to the magnificent garden of Buitenzorg (Bogor) on Java, then the Dutch East Indies, saw that its fruits were different from those of the 'Myrtus'. Hence he gave this plant the more complicated name 'Rhodomyrtus' in his scientific description of 1842. In his many descriptions of the plants of the Dutch Indies, Hasskarl often corrects the names given them earlier by Carl Ludwig Blume (1796-1862). Blume had been in charge of the Buitenzorg garden (today the Kebun Raya of Bogor) before he returned to Europe to become professor of Botany at Leiden (1830). There he drew up a list of East-Indian plants published between 1849-1851, and he took, I think, revenge. Of most of the plants Blume lists, he gives the names of their first describers. But coming to Rhodomyrtus tomentosa he gives only that bare name, without any indication that both name and description are originally Hasskarl's of 1842. It must though at least be said that he doesn't marginally change the name and then add his own initials as he seems to have done on many other occasions...
It must incidentally be added that Hasskarl went on to become a true Botanical Hero. He's the botanist the Dutch government sent out to Peru in 1852 to 'steal' the Cinchona shrub. Transferred ultimately to Java and brought into cultivation there, that plant became a boon to mankind. It's the source of quinine, the anti-malarial medicine that saved hundred of thoiusands of lives. But that's another story altogether from the precisions of 'Myrtus'... (see some of my earlier postings)