PLANTS

 

See Also: THE CEREMONY OF THE ROSE; FLOWERS; GARDENS; KEW GARDENS; THE ROUTE TO MADNESS

 

Aspidistra

The aspidistra was known as the cast-iron plant. This was it was resilient in the noxious atmosphere that existed in many homes. This tended caused by burning coal fires.

See Also: COAL

 

Bluebells

A starch that could be extracted from bluebell bulbs could be used to create a substance that could stiffen linen. It could be used as a glue.

The Spanish bluebell arrived in Britain in the 17^thC. They preferred dry climates and tended to grow only in urban environments. However, they proved to be able to hybridise with the native variety. The result started to spread at the expense of its aboriginal parent.

 

Botanising

Adam Buddle

The Rev Adam Buddle's (1662-1715) herbarium is held by the National History Museum. Sir Hans Sloane cross-referenced his own botanical work with that of Buddle and John Rae.

Linnaeus

While passing over Putney Heath Linnaeus saw gorse for the first time. He fell to his knees to give thanks.

 

The Chelsea Physic Garden

The Chelsea Physic Garden was founded in 1673 by the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries as a teaching garden. Physic related to healing, as in physician . As a young Sir Hans Sloane may have studied. After he had become wealthy through his medical practice he bought the Manor of Chelsea which included the Garden. In 1722 he presented the site to the Apothecaries Society in return for an annual rent of £5. As a practising doctor, he took an active interest in the Garden.

In 1772 the Garden acquired some Icelandic lava rocks. These were used to create what became Britain's oldest rock garden.

The Garden lost its riverside front when the Thames was embanked. Towards the end of the 19^thC it fell into a neglected state. In 1893 the Garden was opened to the public. Previously, it had only been possible to visit it by appointment. Six years later the Trustees of the London Parochial Charities assumed responsibility for its upkeep.

The diversity of the Garden's species is a testimony to its microclimate.

Location: 66 Royal Hospital Road, SW3 4HS (orange, white)

See Also: ESTATES The Cadogan Estate; PHYSICIANS Apothecaries

Website: www.chelseaphysicgarden.co.uk

Cotton

Cotton was native to the Pacific region. In 1732 Sir Hans Sloane arranged for some cotton plants to be transhipped through the garden and on to Georgia, where it led to the creation of the American cotton industry.

See Also: KEW GARDENS Rubber

 

Dahlias

Dahlias are reputed to first have been cultivated in Holland House's garden for Lady Holland in 1804. (P.G. Wodehouse s character Bertie Wooster had an Aunt Dahlia.)

Location: Ilchester Place, W8 6LU (red, pink)

 

Ferns

During the second half of the 19^thC there was a craze for ferns. This was made possible by the existence of terrariums in which to keep them. The vessels' glass protected the plants from the noxious atmosphere of many homes that was caused by the burning of coal fires. Thomas Moore of the Chelsea Physick Garden was a noted expert on ferns. Thomas Moore of the Chelsea Physick Garden was a noted expert on the plants.

 

Hybrids

The first consciously bred plant hybrid was created c.1717 by nurseryman Thomas Fairchild (1667-1729), who had a garden in Hoxton.

 

Imported Plants

John Fothergill

The Quaker John Fothergill (1712-1780) was one of his era's most successful physicians. As a result, he had an aristocratic level of income. He spent much of it on exotic plants. His garden may have helped inspire Joseph Banks's wish to travel and his organisation of Kew Gardens.

 

Lavender

Carshalton was a centre of lavender production. The local soil was chalky soil which suited the plant.

Location: c.SM5 3RF.

Website: www.carshaltonlavender.org

 

The Linnean Society Of London

The Linnean Society of London was founded in 1788. The Society owns the collection of the Swedish naturalist Linnaeus.

The stimulus for the Society's formation was Sir James Edward Smith's ownership of the collection, which he had purchased in 1783 after Sir Joseph Banks had declined to do so. The Society s membership assumed that Smith would at his death leave the assemblage to the body. He did not. It had to purchase it from his heirs.

In 1858 it was a meeting of the Linnean Society that heard Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace's papers on evolution by natural selection.

In 2011 the rules of nomenclature changed so that taxonomists were no longer required a to describe the item in Latin.

Location: Burlington House, 50 Piccadilly, W1J 0BD (orange, brown)

See Also: CHARLES DARWIN T.H. Huxley; LEARNED SOCIETIES Burlington House

Website: www.linnean.org

 

Orchids

In 1731 Peter Collinson, a Quaker cloth merchant, collected a specimen of bletia verecunda while he was in The Bahamas. He returned to England with it, thereby becoming the first person to import an exotic orchid into the country. He gave the specimen to the naval commander Sir Charles Wager who planted it in his own garden. The following year the plant bloomed.

In 1818 the plant hunter William Swainson was working in Brazil. He sent back a number of exotic plants to the United Kingdom. He used a number of apparently dead items of flora as packaging material for the consignment. Back in Britain, William Cattley decided to see whether the packaging could be made to flower. They turned out to be orchids and attracted the interest of the horticulturalist John Lindley. The plants ignited an interest in exotic orchids that was to last until the First World War.

The 6^th Duke of Devonshire was a leading orchid grower. He had his head gardener Joseph Paxton design a greenhouse that was 300ft. by 150ft. and up to 35ft.-high. Paxton experimented with the structure's stove. He proved to be able to create a temperate climate rather than a steamy one. Most exotic orchids found the former environment to be congenial. In 1843 Queen Victoria visited the erection.

The high tax on window glass was repealed in 1845. This opened the way for the popularisation of greenhouses. In 1856 the first artificial hybrid orchid was created. Upon seeing one for the first time, Lindley exclaimed, My God! You will drive the botanists mad!

In 1895 an official registry of orchids was set up. This came to be run by The Royal Horticultural Society.

Location: Gracechurch Street, EC3V 0AD. Collinson's business was based on the street. (red, yellow)

The Royal Horticultural Society, 80 Vincent Square, SW1P 2PB (red, purple)

See Also: ANIMALS Aquaria; EXHIBITIONS The Great Exhibition of 1851

Website: www.rhs.org.uk/plants/plantmanship/plant-registration/orchid-hybrids

Paddington Green Vanilla

The Hon. Charles Greville had a house at Paddington Green and was a patron of Emma Hamilton. In either 1806 or 1807 a vanilla planifolia flowered in his greenhouse. This was the first time that the orchid, which was native to Mexico, had done so in Europe. Cuttings from this plant were used to raise vanilla vines in a series of gardens across Europe. From these, further cuttings were taken and planted in tropical climates where it was believed there was scope for growing the plant commercially for its pods.¹

¹. In 1841 Edmond Albius, a young slave on the French-owned island of R union in the Indian Ocean, developed a technique for manually fertilising vanilla plants. This enabled the birth of a global vanilla industry to develop.

 

Rose

The differences between the old roses and new roses seems to have been established in 1900. Originally, the French regarded 1867, when La France was developed, as being the watershed date. However, they gave way to the British on the matter.

 

The Royal Horticultural Society

In 1804 William Townsend Aiton, Sir Joseph Banks, James Dickson, William Forsyth, the Hon. Charles Greville, Richard Anthony Salisbury, and John Wedgwood met in a room at Hatchard's bookshop in order to found The Society for the Improvement of Horticulture.

In 1822 the Horticultural Society leased some land at Chiswick from the botanically-inclined 6^th Duke of Devonshire for use as its gardens. Joseph Paxton¹ first came to the notice of his grace when he was employed there. The peer took the young man into his own employment.

In 1858 the Commissioners of the Great Exhibition of 1851 granted the Society a lease on part of the Commission's Kensington estate.² These gardens hosted a series of international exhibitions.³ The Society became the Royal Horticultural Society three years later.

The Society's original library was sold in order to pay off debts that had been run up by Joseph Sabine, its Secretary, in his unsuccessful efforts to butter up potential aristocratic patrons. In 1866 the book collection that had been amassed by John Lindley, an Assistant Secretary of the Society, was purchased in order that it might act as the nucleus for a new library.

In 1870 the Society gave up most of the Chiswick garden, a dozen years later the land in Kensington, and in 1904 what remained of the Chiswick property. The Wisley estate near Guildford is now owned by the Royal Horticultural Society. The property was purchased in 1903 by the Shanghai tea and silk merchant Sir Thomas Hanbury and placed in a trust.

In 1904 the Royal Horticultural Hall in Vincent Square was opened.

Location: 80 Vincent Square, SW1P 2PB (red, purple)

See Also: BOOKSHOPS Hatchard's; LIBRARIES

Website: www.rhs.org.uk

¹. Paxton was to be the designer of the Crystal Palace, in which the Great Exhibition was held in 1851.

². Paxton had designed a large greenhouse at Chatsworth, his grace s principal country house, which was in Derbyshire. This experience gave the gardener much of the knowledge and experience that he drew upon to design the Crystal Palace, which hosted the Great Exhibition of 1851.

³. In 1882 the Society chose to surrender its lease on the Kensington estate.

 

SeedShare

Esiah Levy (d.2019) was a son of Jamaican immigrants. He worked on railways signals. He developed a wish to grow his own produce. He mentioned this to a colleague who gave him a seed from which he grew a courgette. He relished its taste of it and found himself left with 350 seeds. He gave most of these away so that other people could enjoy the gourd. He then came up with the idea of SeedShare. This involved him growing interesting varieties of vegetables and giving the seeds away for free, charging only postage. He acquired allotments but also took over his mother's backgarden in Croydon. When one of his sisters complained that she was no longer able to sunbathe in it, he pointed out that the local park was only five minutes walk away.

 

The South London Botanical Institute

The South London Botanical Institute was founded in 1910 by the ornithologist by Allan Octavian Hume, who also founded the Indian National Congress.

Location: 323 Norwood Road, SE24 9AQ

See Also: SOUTH ASIANS The Indian National Congress

Website: www.slbi.org.uk www.inc.in

 

The Tradescants

John Tradescent the elder (d. 1638) of Lambeth and his son John the younger served successively as head gardener to King Charles I. The younger travelled overseas as a plant collector.

The Tradescants corpses were buried in St Mary-at-Lambeth's churchyard.

The antiquarian William Stukeley (d. 1765) recorded that when the botanist and physician William Watson visited the overgrown remnants of the Tradescants Lambeth garden, he was able to identify plants growing there that had been imported by the father and son.

See Also: FRUIT Pineapples, Lambeth Bridge; MUSEUMS The Ashmolean Museum

David Backhouse 2024