Abstract
IN the second volume of the fifth series of the Atti del Reale Istiluto d' incoraggiamento di Napoli (1901), Dr. Nicola Terraciano has an elaborate paper on the wild plants of Italy that are most suitable for decorative purposes in gardens. Such indications are greatly needed in many countries besides Italy. At this season of the year, if the botanist or the flower-lover pays a visit to a garden, or particularly to a flower-show, he will see hundreds of daffodils, for instance. If by chance he visits another locality he will still see hundreds of daffodils of the same kind. They are very beautiful, and to the student of evolution most interesting and most worthy of study. But after a time they get somewhat monotonous, and the visitor begins to long for a change. These daffodils of which we have been speaking may be referred to some two or three, or at most half a dozen, species only, but if we turn to the memoir before us we find some twenty species enumerated, and we wonder why more of them are not pressed into the service. Again, if we look to the “schedules” of the flower-shows at the Cape of Good Hope, or of any of our Australian colonies, we find slavish imitations of European procedures-chrysanthemums galore in their season, daffodils, roses and the like, just as in an English exhibition-but the representatives of the local floras are not represented. And yet the Cape flora and the West Australian flora are probably much richer in plants suitable for cultivation than those of any similar areas in the world. What a disappointment to the botanist to visit a flower-show in South Africa or Australia and find little or nothing but chrysanthemums when he is eager to see the beauties of the Cape Peninsula and of the Swan River.
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Decorative Plants for Gardens 1 . Nature 66, 36 (1902). https://doi.org/10.1038/066036a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/066036a0