Ukrainian named Australian plant after Russian

This all happened 173 years ago, but yet again while Russian troops were in Western Ukraine (at that time repelling Hungarian troops).

Then, as now, Yellow Bells, or Geleznowia verrucosa, grew in near coastal parts of south-west Western Australia, on sandy and gravelly soils from Perth north to Shark Bay. It took a century or more but the plant became with specialist growers around the world, and the cut flower industry, due to its prolific and bold yellow flowers in winter. 

Geleznowia was named in 1849 by Nicolai Stepanowitch Turczaninow, one of about 400 species he described from Australia. I gather from Neville Marchant's account of Turczaninow's contribution to Australian plant taxonomy (in History of Systematic Botany in Australasia, edited by Philip Short and published by the Australian Systematic Botany Society in 1990) was born in Russia, just across the border from Ukraine where he spent most of his early life, studying at Kharkov University. Given where we are today, I'm calling him Ukranian.

Turczaninow named this genus after his Russian colleague, Nicolai Ivanovich Zheleznov, using the German spelling of his surname, Geleznow. Some three-quarters of Turczaninow's 43 generic names are - according to Marchant - no longer in use today (being considered to be part of preexisting genera) but this one has endured. 

Turczaninow never visited Australia. In fact he never left the Eurasian continent, collecting mostly around Russia and Ukraine, and venturing a little into Siberia and Mongolia. He gained access to Australian plants through the exchange of herbarium specimens from the likes of James Drummond, who collected a sample of this species from 'Swan River'.

Geleznowia is part of the citrus family, Rutaceae, along with many other better known Australian genera such as Boronia, Correa and wax flowers (Phylotheca and Eriostemon). What sets it apart are the large showy sepals on each flower, and the large petal-like bracts that turn from yellow to orange-brown as the flowers age around a cluster of one to four of those yellow flowers. 

While our species in the Australian Garden at Royal Botanic Gardens Cranbourne is labelled Geleznowia verrucosa - a species name referring to the somewhat (although not overly) warty branches and leaves - it is possibly one of a number of variants that might warrant its own recognition.

Local variants have been noted across the range by the cut flower industry and botanists. In 2020, a second species, Geleznowia amabilis, was described for a variant restricted to a few populations in the Kalbarri region, near the north of the genus range. The species name is translated by the authors as 'worthy of love' and the distinguishing characteristics are rather minor but many.  

It seems there are more variants our there in the south-west waiting for taxonomists to complete there comparative work. For now you can use Geleznowia verrucosa for most plants in cultivation, or simply Yellow Bells.