Plant Introduction Dates

I have only just found this note. If I am not too late I could offer some suggestions, though I am sure by now you have taken care of it.

In 2003 I published “Tangible Memories: Californians and their gardens 1800 – 1950″. The appendix lists the date of new plants introduced into California.

In 2009 I published “The Global Migrations of Ornamental Plants; how the world got into your garden. In the appendix I have several lists of plants introduced by date.

Other thoughts:

Jim Folsom, director of the Huntington Botanical Gardens, has a fabulous “Plant Trivia ” site.

There is a New Ornamentals Society web site with a great deal of information. You have to subscribe to this but it is very worthwhile.

I have only just seen the above notes and comments, and as it’s now 2010, it may not be of any interest, but for the past decade I have been building up a database of plant introductions to the UK up to 1800. For the past thirteen years I have been a professional gardener at two eighteenth century gardens and been heavily involved in identifying, sourcing and growing historic plants.

I now have a large database which is constantly being added to – at the moment I am going through 18th C nursery and seedsmans catalogues which are then being incorporated into the main research.

If this is of interest to anyone, please get in touch. I should be on the Garden History Society Researchers list where my contact details can be found.

I have spent the last three years putting historic gardens into the Priory’s land andd I too have much trouble as you do finding acurate dates, I found the “Origins of plants” helpful to a degree and also John Harvey’s book, but no where is there a definitive list, so I am trying to compile a list my self but have only just started. I would really apreciate any help with this.my gardens span 1154 to th 16th century.

I am head gardener at Jane Austen’s house museum and I also have been researching plant introduction dates for 10 years as I have very nice labels in the garden and do need these dates on the labels. I do feel that our visitors need to be educated and they are pleased to see informative labels. The garden was supposed to be just the Regency era, but that did’nt give very many different plants without lots of repeats, so the plants here now go back quite far, to AD 1,000 . After all these years, I have devised my own dates lists, but I do often come up without knowing the dates of certain plants. I do agree with Judith Taylor (May 20th 2010). Would it be possible to contact horticultural colleges, RBGKew, RBGEdinburgh or RBGKew at Wakehurst about plant lists. I would’nt mind getting the ball rolling or we could all of us send our lists to each other and see if that makes a substantial list that could perhaps be published in some way. It would certainly be a very nice project for a student. Comments anyone ? Yours Celia

Judith,

I think that that is a brilliant idea to get a well known person involved, as He should have many contacts and/or ideas of his own.
Lets hope something comes of it.

Celia

Dr Brickell sent me this note:

Dear Judith,

Thanks for your e-mail with details of the plant introduction dates on the Garden History website which I will be looking at shortly.

It would certainly be a valuable resource to be able to consult a reliable list of plant introduction dates and related data. I am not sure whether either Kew or the RHS would be able to act as a coordinator for such a project – resources are very stretched in both organisations at present – but I will contact Brent Elliott, the RHS historian and archivist to see of he can suggest a possible way forward.

Best wishes,

Chris.

Subject: Plant introductions

Dear Chris,
I thought you might be interested in the comments on the Garden History website about the dates plants were introduced into the UK.

http://www.gardenhistorysociety.org/post/forum/plant-introduction-dates/comment-page-1/#comment-2536

Several garden curators and others are all interested in trying to create a reliable list of plant introductions to use at their various properties. Each of them has a partial list but if all the lists were all melded together a very useful and even definitive document would emerge. It struck me that you could give them some helpful advice about the next steps. I suggested that one of the RHS centres or perhaps RBG Kew might act as the coordinator.
I look forward to hearing from you when you have a moment. I am currently working on the history of the marigold, that much despised but vibrant plant beloved of millions. My book Visions of Loveliness: the work of forgotten flower breeders is in press.

All best wishes

Judith

http://www.horthistoria.com

I have not had time to look at this site since my first comment as I have been very busy with my new business at The Priory, so I am pleased and fascinated by the interest in a subject very close to my heart, albeit I am a completely self-taught amateur.
We have now accomplished opening our home as well as the gardens, to B&B guests and occasionally for events based on Food, Garden, and textile history. My aim is to show people the different aspects, and historic, as well as present day uses of the plants both in our gardens and native habitats.
So far I have designed and planted an apothecary’s garden based on the 10th century St Gall plan, which is overlooked by three beautifully painted Murals, also a cloister garth planted with species which could have been growing here between 1154 and 1538, the period when our home was an Augustinian college. The front of the house has been planted with three different types of knot garden, to show the progression of this idea, and to illustrate the time when the Priory became a private dwelling following the dissolution. We also have a Shakespeare bank, flowery mead, potager, woodland walk orchard wild flower meadow,(in progress) pond margins, and much native planting. At present I am working on the Garden of a thousand flowers which will show the plants used in medieval needlework, dyes design and tolls and fibres. We have put in a 14th century Hortus Concluses (enclosed courtly love garden), and I am planning a ‘Simples garden to show the plants which a local wise woman would pick for her simple remedies. I am hoping to find some help as the acre is becoming too much for me to do on my own, I did have some very welcome help for a few days in the summer from a gentleman who I believe is studying horticulture in Edinburgh, but, still haven’t managed to find regular help.

I have not so far come across Katherine Swift’s “Morville Hours”, but thank you so much for the tip I will certainly follow this up.
I have started my research into introduction dates as an integral part of my plans for The Priory gardens and it is now in danger of taking over as I have found it to be a compulsive part of my wish to convey an understanding to people about the plants in our surroundings. Ideally I would wish to involve local children, as well as adults and have them gain at least a basic knowledge of native flora as well as the uses of plants they see around them. I am compiling lists of plants beginning with native British and then moving through century by century, detailing the origin, culinary, medicinal, and legendary magical uses, as well as the essential oil properties dye properties and many other uses, to give a full C.V. of each plant.
A mammoth task and one I do not in any way expect to complete alone, I think I would be pleased just to get as far as I can.
I believe it is vital to give time to close attention to plants to carry on the work that was started so many centuries ago and that has slipped into the margins of our busy modern lives.

I wonder if any of you can help me with one of my many conundrums. During my research into plant introductions I have become increasingly confused by Dipsacuss fullonum, Dipsacus fullonum ‘fullonum’, Dipsacus sativus , and Dipsacus sativus ‘fullonum’I started off by thinking it was strange that a plant with such soft spines could have been used for either the purpose of fulling cloth or carding fleece. As a spinner I had a trial pair of carders made with Dipsacus fullonum which at the time was the only teasel known to me. Then one day whilst working at The Eden Project I saw a different kind of teasel with straight spines and a much more rigid form. I was intrigued and eventually managed to grow some of each type in my own garden. It then became apparent to me that there were two distinct plants, one fit for fulling and one most definitely not.
I have subsequently read that there are two plants and that much of my confusion is shared by others. However I am still not quite certain of the correct botanical name for the lesser known rigid plant. I have at various times been lead to believe that Carle Linnaeus is to blame by wrongly naming the wild teasel fullonum, when actually the fullers teasel is stuck with the appellation ‘sativus’. Help!!!!!!!!! I would also like to know if the fullers teasel i.e. Dipsacus sativus is a native or if it was developed through cultivation, or crossed with an ‘outlandish’ species.

From Chris Brickell

Dear Judith,

Just a quick e-mail to thank you for the information on the recreation of this mediaeval garden – certainly a fascinating story and well worth a visit in due course.

Best wishes,
Chris.

Dear Kierin,
It is good to hear from you. We are like the blind men and the elephant. Everyone has got hold of one or two bits. That is why it makes a lot of sense to put it all together in one place but so far there is no way of doing this.
The most important plants from Japan are probably azaleas. Many azalea hybrids came from Japan where azalea has been bred for hundreds of years. A lot of the plants were originally from China but had established themselves very successfully in Japan.
The Kurume series of evergreen azaleas is an example. Ernest Wilson was the first to introduce them to the West. The Kurume azaleas were developed by Motozo Sakamoto, a Japanese nurseryman. He raised and selected seedlings of azaleas growing on the sacred Mt. Kirishima.
C.E. Lucas PhiIlips, a noted rhododendron expert and Peter Barber, who managed Exbury Gardens, have left a very valuable (and revealing) description of Rothschild himself and his methods of plant crossing in “The Rothschild Rhododendrons: a record of the gardens at Exbury”. Rothschild worked with the Knap Hill crosses developed by the Waterer family.
Koichiro Wada, 1907 – 1981 sent the first specimen of R. yakushimanum, one of the R. degronianum group, to England in 1934. It had been identified in Japan in 1920. This species is only found in a minute niche at the very top of a tall mountain on Yaku Island.
There are conifers and ivies from Japan, also many types of maple tree.
I am sure the other people who have been part of this blog can tell you a lot more than I can.
Judith

Hi Kierin,

I’ve just caught up with the recent comments and your question about the introduction dates for Japanese plants.

I’ve never come across a comprehensive list of these plants, but wondered if you had read a book by Alice Coats called ‘The Quest for Plants’ – she has a chapter on plant collecting in Japan, from Kaempfer in the late 17th C onwards, which might give you some pointers. Failing that, trawling through the five volumes of William Aiton’s ‘Hortus Kewensis’ would be rather time consuming (and fascinating), but is probably the most comprehensive list of pre-1813 introductions. Similarly, Curtis’s “Botanical Magazine’ would be a good place to look – the Lindley Library have a fantastic set!

My area of plant introduction work is primarily pre-1800, and there certainly were very few plants coming from Japan at that time as it was closed to most Europeans. Those I have come across include:
Aucuba japonica (intro. 1783)
Ginkgo biloba (intro. 1754) – this may well appear in early lists as Salisburia adiantifolia
Chimonanthus praecox (intro. 1766)
Camellia japonica (intro. c.1739). This features as Plate No. 42 in Curtis’s ‘Botanical Magazine (Vol.2, 1783), where some details are given of flower colour, etc.

I can send you details of other plants, including herbaceous, but there really aren’t very many.

Hope this might help,

Karen

I too have been searching for plant introduction dates. My house, adjacent to an English Heritage property, was renovated for the village miller in 1759. I planned a contemporaneous garden some 17 years ago using as many plants as I could find that were listed in John Harvey’s book plus those on a list which I downloaded from the Chelsea Physic Garden at the time. The garden now needs renovating and I have found Graham Stuart Thomas’s ‘Perennial Garden Plants’ invaluable. My other resource complementary resource is ‘The Hillier Manual of Trees and Shrubs’. I’m a bit surprised no-one has mentioned either of these, which are at least readily available, though not exhaustive, nor in a searchable form. Some patient person is neede to covert them into a database.

It may be of interest that in my book ‘The Origin of Plants’ published in 2001 by Hodder Headline and now in paperback published by Transworld in 2004 which charted the intoduction of plants into Britain from 1000 AD to 2000 AD after each chapter there is a list of some of the introductions in each century. In addition I have over the past fifteen years compiled a list of several thousand introductions to which I am constantly adding.

I am sad to report that the last year has been very difficult for me and as a result of being unexpectedly left on my own at The Priory I am reluctantly going to have to sell my beautiful 12th century home along with the gardens which I have worked at for the last 5 years. My hopes of showing the different periods of english garden history along with the introductions all named and in context to provide an enjoyable way of understanding the changes in english gardens will have to go, unless any one has any miracles up their sleeves.

It was so good to read all the comments about plant introductions, for a long time I thought I was out there on my own! Thank you too Judith for your complimentary words about my first book.
When I began collecting plant introduction dates (originally for Plant Heritage, Hampton court Show) and then wrote about it one of the unexpected delights was realising how sensitive the introductions were to something happening in that part of the world,three plants in say from S. Africa within the space of five years and one can be certain that its the result of trade, war or collecting. It is a different way of interpreting social history.
Gathering a list together is as we all know never ending, but one of the things that might be helpful, is indexing a Collection of the Lists, where they are housed, if they are in the public domain and so on. That would be a start. I am a Fellow of the Linnean Society and I wonder if we could make a collection under their aegis? I live in Brittany and will be in England during November, perhaps those interested could meet and see how we could take the idea forward.
If anyone is interested in taking this further do let me know
Meanwhile have a happy Diamond studied Olympian summer!

Judith, good morning, thank you for your comments. sometime ago I wrote a paper regarding a ‘Plant Introduction Forum’ which you might find of interest, could we communicate by our own emails? Mine is mcc3@wanadoo.fr
It just would be less cumbersome I think?
Real April showers here and so cold, this time last year we were eating outdoors already, no such luck this year it is too cold and so showery. We have seen so far, very few swallows or house martins (and no swifts)!
Looking forward to hearing from you
Maggie

Having bought Maggie’s book (excellent!) I now find that a large part of the Garden History Society’s collection of books is held here at my workplace; the University of Bath, shared with York Uni. I will now JOIN the Society so that I feel less guilty dipping into those books.