Once upon a time, in the year 1771, there was a French explorer named Philibert Commerson. He had a passionate botanist’s eye for plants. He apparently also loved the sight of a beautiful woman. Disembarking on Bourbon Island, the future Reunion Island, he spotted a splendid round flower, with thick and delicate petals.

He had a friend named Nicole Reine Lepaute (or Le Paute). To pay her tribute, he named the plant – in Latin, which was the rule – after the woman and in reference to the sky, Peauta coelestina. The first hydrangea had been identified and botanised. Two years later on the Ile de France, which would become Mauritius, the indefatigable Philibert came across the superb flower once again in a missionaries’ garden.

Once again the botanist fell in love and this time he called the flower Hortensia. Why Hortensia? Serious-minded people say he was inspired only by the garden, hortus in Latin, where he found it. However, a historian discovered while studying the archives of the Lepaute family that Nicole Reine was sometimes called Hortense. Take a walk through our villages, our towns, our gardens, on the continent or on the islands. Perfectly contented with our soils and climate, of our sea spray that seems to give them a boost, these perfectly integrated immigrants have grown and multiplied.

If every variety has its charm, I prefer the blues with their extraordinary intensity, which can only be the result of an acid soil containing alumina. This is exactly the kind of soil we have – our slate was filled with alumina. That’s why Brittany is the queen of blue hydrangeas. And if in the international language of botanists the hortensia is now referred to as hydrangea, the French in general, and particularly the Bretons, who have romantic spirits and long memories, remain faithful to Hortensia just as Philibert was to his heavenly Hortense.