IRISH GARDENING. 



II 



Three Years' Work at Sedums* 



By E. Lloyd Praeger. 



Perhaps a brief account of experiences in an 

 attempt to work out on.' of the most difficult 

 genera which is in general cultivation may be of 

 interest to those readers of Irish Gardening 

 who, having theniselves learned the difficulties of 

 running down the species in some complicated 

 and misnamed group, are inclined to look sympa- 

 thetically on work of a similar kind. V^* It was the 

 late Canon Ellacombe, whose loss all gardeners 

 deplore so deeply, 

 who first urged on 

 me the desirability 

 of a revision of the 

 Sedums found in cul- 

 tivation ; and after 

 a second appeal from 

 him, and a prompt 

 and generous offer 

 f r o ni the Royal 

 Horticultural Scciety 

 of London to pub- 

 lish the results of 

 such an investiga- 

 tion, I took oft' 

 my coat — meta- 

 phorically — and 

 went at them. The 

 study of this genus 

 is rendered difficult 

 owing to several 

 reasons. First, a 

 number of the species 

 — and most of them 

 common in cultiva- 

 tion — are poly- 

 morphic ; they dis- 

 play a large range 

 of variation, as 

 regards size, growth- 

 form, shape and 

 colour of leaf, colour 

 of flower, and so on : 

 so that different 

 forms of one species 

 often appear, super- 

 ficially, more distinct 

 from each other than 

 do allied but quite distinct species. Next, the 

 nomenclature of the genus in gardens is quite 

 hopeless ; several common species are grown 

 under a dozen names apiece, and one name is 

 found applied to a dozen different species. 

 Thirdly, these plants do so badly that herbarium 

 specimens are often neai'ly useless to help identi- 

 fication, and can seldom be used without the 

 exercise of great care, and without reliance only 

 on critical characters, which are often minute. 

 On the other side of the account, one was helped 

 by the ease with which the species can be grown — 

 though this advantage often proved the reverse, 

 since the readiness of the plants to invade their 

 neighbours' territory resulted in confusion of the 

 labels unless much care was exercised. 



Well, the first and the main thing to do was to 

 get together as large and as complete a collection 

 of Sedums as was possible, and fortunately I was 

 well ahead with this work before the paralyzing 



influence of the European War slowly clutched 

 and strangled the free and easy intercourse at 

 home and abroad which we had enjoyed so long. 

 I begged, borrowed and bought in all directions! 

 I plundered the British i^ublic collections, I 

 worried my friends, I wrote perhaps a hundred 

 and fifty or two hundred begging letters to foreign 

 botanic gardens and foreign botanists. Parcels 

 soon began to pour in — from England, Scotland 

 and Ireland, France, Holland. Belgium, Denmark, 

 Sweden, Norway, Russia, Austria, Italy, Spain 

 and Portugal, Algeria, Canada and the Ignited 

 States, the Himalayas, Hong-Kong and Japan. 

 I cannot indeed sufficiently thank the directors 



of botanic gardens 

 both at home and 

 abroad, many friends 

 — some of them, 

 unfortunately, at 

 present enemies — 

 and many distant 

 correspondents whose 

 acquaintance I hope 

 to make. some day, 

 for their generous 

 response to nay 

 request for material. 

 I had also the good 

 fortune to get abroad 

 just before war broke 

 out, and made a 

 good " scoop " of 

 material at Berlin, 

 Leipzig, Dresden, 

 Hamburg, and Bre- 

 men. As a result a 

 large collection was 

 got together in my 

 garden during 1914 

 and 1915. At first, 

 until I had made my- 

 self familiar with 

 most of the species, 

 everything was grown 

 and flowered. Later, 

 with better know- 

 ledge it was in most 

 cases difficult to ex- 

 amine material 

 received. Altogether, 

 some 1,500 separate 

 plants were grown 



PlUilULA DEonr.M. 



and flowered, and about an equal number were 

 either examined as received, or inspected where 

 they grew in various public or private gardens. 



The first result of my efforts, then, was the 

 accumulation in the garden of a rather bewildering 

 collection, with a wealth of obviously inaccurate 

 names, enough to make one shudder. Even 

 collections received from the most famous 

 botanic gardens were evidently misnamed to the 

 extent of one-third, or even one-half, of the total. 

 The nurserynien's stuff was worse still — in one 

 case every species was wrongly named. But with 

 the flowering season of 1914 order began to evolve. 

 Species after species was, in spite of frequent 

 variability, ruu down, with the assistance of a 

 collection of twenty or thirty of the leading 

 floras of the countries in which the plants were 

 native, and occasional reference to a much more 

 extensive literature. Some species proved easy : 

 others were very tough nuts to crack, especially 



