'Streptocarpus: sounds like a disease'. If only I'd had a pound every time someone had said that to me at a flower show...

Did you know that Streptos means 'twisted' in Greek?

In the case of the plant, the seed pod, or fruit (carpos in Greek), twists. If you leave a seed pod on a plant, you can watch it ripen and untwist which allows the seed to fall out.

In the case of the disease, the name reflects the characteristic chain-like appearance of the spherical bacteria, which resembles a twisted string of beads or berries (coccus in Greek).