Abelia is another genus that's recently been found to be polyphyletic and has hence been split up. 'Polyfila what?' I hear you shout. Polyphyletic. It means it's a genus that includes things that look similar but which are not in fact closely related. Ok, let me explain. One of the rules of modern systematics is that any taxon (genus, family, order, class) must include all those species that are most closely related, even if they look very different and it mustn't include any less closely related species, no matter how similar they may look. So Abelia has always been known to consist of three or four distinct groups. Putting them all in the one genus - Abelia, would mean that they are each other's closest relatives and that nothing else is closer. In fact this is not the case. Some Abelia are more closely related to Dipelta and Kolkwitzia than they are to other Abelia. In this situation we have two options. We can put them all (Abelia, Kolkwitzia and Dipelta) in the one big genus, or we can split Abelia into a number of smaller genera. It's a judgement call, but in this case the second option was taken. Hence we have some new genera to learn - Abelia - the well known x grandiflora, schumannii etc. Diabelia for the less well known but very lovely spathulata, serrata etc. Vaselea for the peculiar and isolated Mexican floribunda.