THE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY OF NEW YORK 



more long. Some have the flowers clustered at the ends of the 

 shoots, in others they clothe nearly the whole of the current sea- 

 son's growth. All have small leaves and twiggy branches and are 

 extraordinarily floriferous. These we may consider generic char- 

 acters but in diversity of form and in color of flowers Mother 

 Nature has frolicked with the Cape Heaths as with no other genus 

 of shrubs. My visit to the Cape happened in the autumn — the off 

 season for Heaths — yet I collected in blossom more than one hun- 

 dred species and saw millions of plants laden with flowers. A 

 scientist must not gush but the strongest adjectives in our language 

 — or any other language — would not exaggerate the beauty of 

 the Ericas of the Cape of Good Hope. 



With the garden-lover of from fifty to one hundred years ago, 

 Cape Heaths made the Cape famous. He knew, admired and 

 grew these plants to perfection in the crudely heated greenhouses 

 of the day. In Andrews's four-volume work entitled "Heaths," 

 published 1802-30, colored plates of 288 species and varieties 

 are given. All are drawn from plants which flowered in the 

 British Isles. One nursery firm, that of Lee & Kennedy of Ham- 

 mersmith, grew 228 kinds and these are listed by Andrews. With 

 the decline of indoor gardening in Europe and what little there 

 ever was in this country and the specialization which has in- 

 creased so greatly with the development of modern greenhouses, 

 Cape Heaths, except a few of the toughest sorts, have become 

 lost to gardens. Never the easiest of subjects to grow success- 

 fully in pots they required skillful handling and more attention 

 than the modern gardener either could or would give them and 

 this, as much as change of fashion, caused their wholesale disap- 

 pearance from northern conservatories. In California the few 

 species remaining thrive luxuriantly out of doors and had gardens 

 flourished in the neighborhood of San Francisco half a century ago 

 we should not have to deplore the loss of the Heaths of the Cape. 

 In Bailey's "Cyclopedia" thirteen Cape species of Erica are enumer- 

 ated and a dozen others with several hybrids are mentioned in small 

 type. This emphasizes the poverty of our gardens. Of the few 

 now grown E. melanthera with small, rose-colored flowers each 

 with prominent black anthers, is perhaps the most common. Others 

 are E. ventricosa, with flowers of varied colors, E. fonnosa and 



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