RECENT CHINESE VEGETABLES. 



In recent years there has been a distinct infusion of Chinese and 

 Japanese plants into our vegetable gardening. For the most part 

 these plants are little known, even to the seedsmen who offer 

 some of them as novelties, and it seems to be important that some 

 definite account should be made of them before they become gen- 

 erally distributed and greatly modified, and while yet the history 

 of their introduction is as little complicated as possible. It was 

 some five years ago that the present writer took up their study, 

 the results of which are presented in the following paper. It was 

 at first thought that the botanical problems growing out of this 

 study would be of easy solution and that little need be done in the 

 final report but to narrate the behavior of the plants in the garden ; 

 but it was soon found that some of the types are almost inextri- 

 cably confused, and that there are garden plants which have been 

 long cultivated in this country which are undoubtedly of oriental 

 origin, but the history of which is wholly unknown and which, 

 furthermore, are not described and probably not mentioned in any 

 American writings. The experiments with these Chinese vegeta- 

 bles, therefore, have enforced upon me again the importance of 

 critical studies of garden plants — to which few^ American students 

 have given their attention, — not only for the purpose of arriving 

 directly at economic results, but quite as much for the elucidation 

 of the broader problems of the variation of plants under new con- 

 ditions of life and for the discovery of the means by which they 

 may become widely distributed over the face of the earth and in 

 the very centers of civilized countries without attracting a passing 

 notice from naturalists. 



These Chinese vegetables which I have here described, might 

 be thrown into two categories with respect to their introduction 

 into North America. The first group would include some of the 

 better known species, like the so-called cabbages, which have 



