Aother name for the plants in this genus is

Hedionda

Hedionda is the name of a lagoon.

Hediondo is a common name for some of the Bosea plants.

It is a grammatical term: in Spanish, depending on the gender. Since plant, planta, is feminine, hedionda is the feminine gender.

It means stinky.

Not according to all of these sources:

https://www.google.com/#q=hedi...

Yes, in Spanish HeriondA means stinky but that has nothing to do with the Bosea plants.
http://www.spanishdict.com/tra...

Or we could gang up on Lavanda and make fun of her native language rather than being polite and compassionate..
I thought we were supposed to be nice to each other. And helpful. And educational.

My friend from Guatemala is helping me learn - todays lesson was "I have dirt under my fingernails'.

I just found out that my fingernails (uñas) are feminine and my hands (manos) are masculine.
Sure, I may never get the hang of speaking Spanish, but I am attempting to learn.
Thank you for listening.

You may go ahead an hate me now if you like.

I fail to see how anyone made fun of anyone else's native language. Your comment would make more sense if Lavanda had been correct in using her native language. Hediondo, not hedionda, is the Spanish name for the plant. I don't doubt that planta is a feminine noun, but hediondo must be a descriptive adjective for some other plant-related noun of another gender, such as arbusto (Spanish for shrub).

C'mon @greene, nobody is ganging up on anybody. Sue and Zuzu are two of the nicest people you'll ever meet and if you ever read a mean spirit from their posts you are clearly mis-reading them. Give them the benefit of the doubt. There is not a problem here as far as I can see.

@zuzu, I don't know why you doubt it, but planta is feminine and hediondo is an adjective meaning stinking the same as hedionda. When attached to a masculine noun it is hediondo and when attached to a feminine noun it is hedionda. I think the misunderstanding in regards to Bosea is that, the adjective hediondo, is being used as a noun. If you were to say "Bosea es la planta hedionda" (Bosea is a stinking plant) then Lavanda would be correct. But, in spanish, nouns do not shift gender, like adjectives do. So, since Hediondo is being used as a noun, only the one version would apply. I am not familiar with Bosea so I have no idea if they stink but, the words hedionda/hediondo has other meaning depending on how it is used. http://www.spanishdict.com/tra.... So if the plant doesn't stink then, why that term was used is anybody's guess.

Jay, I said I don't doubt that planta is a feminine noun. I didn't say I doubt it.

Lavanda said that the common name for Bosea is Hedionda, and I merely pointed out that the common name is spelled Hediondo. She doubted my response and mentioned the grammatical rationale behind the name. Regardless of any grammatical explanations, however, the common name for the plant (according to every Spanish source) is still Hediondo, not Hedionda.

Sorry zuzu, I misread that part. I agree with you on the correct name,but you did say:

zuzu said: but hediondo must be a descriptive adjective for some other plant-related noun of another gender, such as arbusto (Spanish for shrub).

My grammatical explanation was to correct your mistake there and to point out why @Lavanda might have arrived at the incorrect name. Also @Calif_Sue said "Yes, in Spanish HeriondA means stinky but that has nothing to do with the Bosea plants." So, I was trying to point out that they are both the same word in different forms, so it does have something to do with Bosea, even if it doesn't literally, "stinking".

Jay, I'm aware that nouns do not "shift gender" in Spanish, or in any language I know, for that matter. I simply continued the grammatical discussion because Lavanda had used it as her proof that Hedionda was the common name for the plant, which is planta, a feminine noun. I pointed out that it didn't necessarily apply to planta. It could have applied to a masculine noun, such as arbusto. The "stinking" discussion has nothing to do with my posts, so I can't comment on that.

Anyway, suffice it to say that I was implying nothing derogatory about anyone's native language. English was the fifth language I had to learn when I moved to yet another new country, so I sympathize completely with people who have a different native language, but correcting misspelled words is something I do on this site, whether they're misspellings in English or in someone's native language.

zuzu my apologies, to you for any mistake, I may have made. I never intended to offend or ruffle any feathers. I think everyone who has posted in this thread, with the exception of dave has made, minor mistakes. You and dave had already corrected greene, so I was only trying to clarify the others, and in the process made some of my own.