A collection of plants native to Japan was dispatched in 1828 to Leiden University in the Netherlands. Many were new to the West and welcomed into gardens there. One in particular attracted much attention. Discovered by the German physician and botanist Philipp Franz Siebold growing on the sides of volcanoes, by 1847 it was named 'the most interesting new plant of the year' by the Society of Agriculture and Horticulture in Utrecht.