The Botanist in the Garden

Abstract

FIIFTY years ago botany, so far as the class-room 1 was concerned, was very much a matter of definitions, just as field botany was concerned almost wholly with the making of a herbarium of local species. The student found himself set to learn a new language dichasial inflorescences, gynandro-phores, campylotropous ovules as though designed to inculcate the advantages of a classical education. This conception survived pretty well to the end of the nineteenth century. Towards the close of the ‘nineties, when examining a school which professed botany, and turning over the notebooks, I found this sentence, evidently taken down by the whole class from dictation, or rather copied from the blackboard, for the spelling would otherwise have offered variants: “Amaryllis fruit a bilocular loculicidal capsule, a diplotegium”. One of my co-examiners breathed his gratitude that he had been introduced to the lady under a happier star and had been learned instead “to sport with Amaryllis in the shade”.

The Living Garden:

or the How and Why of Garden Life. By Dr. E. J. Salisbury. Pp. xi + 338 + 17 plates. (London: G. Bell and Sons, Ltd., 1935.) 10s. 6d.net.