A flowering hoya plant brings a flowering of doubt -

The flowers on a hoya plant are small and precise. Each blossom consists of five, waxy, light-pink petals in the shape of a star. Despite having a hoya plant on the landing outside our bedroom door for years, I’d never seen the blossoms before. That’s because this plant had never flowered before.

Then My Lovely Wife put it out in the back yard so it could get rained on while we were on vacation, and it burst forth.

This was quite moving, actually, for the plant came with a story. In 1821, the Rev. Robert Blakey and his wife, Anne Coates Blakey, left Lancashire in northwest England for Canada, where he took over a small church in the Ontario township of Augusta.

Robert had been sent to Canada by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. The gospel wasn't the only thing propagated, for Anne Blakey had brought with her from England a hoya plant. She passed a cutting from that plant on to her daughter, who passed a cutting on to her daughter, and so on and so on until my wife, Ruth — the great-great-great-granddaughter of Anne Coates Blakey — received a cutting.

That’s the hoya that finally blossomed last week, a direct descendent of a wax plant that had crossed the Atlantic.

Ruth posted a note about it on Facebook, about how her Canadian-born mother, Kathy, had told her the story, how our own daughters now had their own cuttings. Ruth mentioned that bees had discovered the plant in the back yard and were gathering nectar from the blossoms. "Made me feel happy and peaceful," she wrote.

And then our friend Richard weighed in.

Now I’m pretty sure that Richard is in favor of happiness and peace, but he also happens to be a lawyer turned journalist turned professor of investigative journalism. This résumé tends to make him a bit suspicious. Reading Ruth’s Facebook post left Richard with a question: Why would an immigrant to a godforsaken Colonial backwater go to the trouble of bringing a non-edible plant with her?

Space on a 19th-century sailing ship was presumably at a premium. Wouldn’t it make sense to bring something more useful? A potato plant? A brass kettle? Another blanket or Bible?

Furthermore, Richard pointed out, the hoya had only recently been established in England. It was introduced in 1802, according to some sources, or 1811, according to others. It was named after Thomas Hoy, who was the green-thumbed gardener for the Duke of Northumberland.

Would a vicar’s wife from Lancashire have access to a plant native to Asia that in 1821 was more likely to be a plaything for a horticulturally inclined English aristocrat?

In other words: Was Ruth’s lovely family story — a story tended as carefully as the many hoya cuttings passed down matrilineally through the generations — nothing more than a tissue of lies?

Thanks, Richard! Care to weigh in on Santa Claus?

We in the journalism biz have an expression: Too good to check. That describes a story so delightful or improbable — possessed of such satisfying elements — that it simply must be true.

But we have another expression: If your mother tells you she loves you, check it out.

So, what is the truth of Ruth's hoya plant? It could be descended from the plant a missionary's wife brought over from England, but a detailed ship's manifest is probably the only way to prove it. That or a letter to or from Anne Blakey that mentions a hoya plant.

Absent those, what we have is a story that may not be literally true but that reveals truths. It’s easy to believe that a young woman leaving the only land she’d ever known would want to carry a bit of that land with her, who, when the St. Lawrence River outside her window was thick with ice, would want to gaze at that reminder.

And it’s easy to accept that she would want her children — and her children’s children — to know that the metaphorical roots they put down once grew in other soil.

Story time

My Lovely Wife’s hoya plant has made me wonder about other bits of family lore that fall apart under closer scrutiny. I’m curious: Are there stories in your family that you always thought were true but you later found were embellished? Any old stories that you misinterpreted?

Share them with me. Write john.kelly@washpost.com, with “Family Lore” in the subject line.

Twitter: @johnkelly

For previous columns, visit washingtonpost.com/johnkelly.

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