Asia westward through central and south-western Russia 
to Hungary. Throughout Germany as far as the Nether- 
lands and from Central Europe southwards into the 
Balkan peninsula, Italy and southern France, it also 
occurs not infrequently as an alien. The name scoparia, 
long associated with the species, reflects the fact that 
throughout southern Europe the dry plant is used for 
making brooms. The genuine Kochia scoparia has been 
known in English gardens at least since the close of the 
sixteenth century; it was figured by Gerarde in 1597 
as the Bushie or Besome Tode-flax, but he was already 
acquainted with the popular Italian name Belvidere, 
which during the seventeenth century appears to have 
been the term mostly used in English and French 
gardens. It is clear from Gerarde’s account that the 
form of the plant known to him did not change in colour 
from green to red during the autumn, and, indeed, there 
is no evidence that during the next three centuries any 
form of K. scoparia exhibiting this phenomenon was 
known to gardeners. Nor is there any indication that 
during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the form 
of the Belvidere with narrower leaves figured in our plate 
was in cultivation in this country. We do not till 1759 
find any evidence that suggests the existence of 
K. scoparia, forma trichophila, in British gardens. This 
evidence comes from Scotland, and the seed of the 
narrow-leaved form appears to have arrived there from 
Holland as Belvidere, under which name it appears in 
a Haarlem seed-list of 1754. We learn from Miller’s 
Gardeners’ Dictionary” of 1768 that the narrow- 
leaved form was in English gardens, but we find no 
allusion to any save a green Belvidere throughout the 
eighteenth century. With the establishment of the form 
with nearly filiform leaves just after the middle of that 
century, the cultivation of the true K. scoparia appears 
to have been abandoned. During the later half of the 
nineteenth century the same became very nearly the 
case as regards the green narrow-leaved form, its culti- 
vation being continued only in large establishments 
like that at Kew. At the close of the century, however, 
interest in this old-fashioned plant became resuscitated 
owing to the discovery in or shortly before 1898 of the 
