The Flowering Currants 



No wonder that during the past century the 

 Flowering Currant, though entering Britain as an 

 alien, has found its way into gardens of every rank, 

 and is known by even the veriest garden tyro. The 

 year 1914, indeed, marked the centenary of its first 

 introduction in formal botanical language to English 

 flower lovers, but the introduction was only made from 

 poor dried specimens that could tell nothing of the 

 glorious beauty of the shrub in its native home; it 

 was not until more than a decade later that the first 

 plant blossomed in our land. 



The discovery of the Flowering Currant has a 

 flavour of historical interest about it. At the end of 

 the eighteenth century, a certain Mr. Archibald Men- 

 zies, a doctor in the Royal Navy, and " one of the 

 most excellent of men and the most liberal of botan- 

 ists," as we are told, visited, on a voyage round the 

 world, the coast of North-west America, and there, 

 in 1787, he saw the Flowering Currant near Nootka 

 Sound. He found it growing in partly shaded places, 

 along the banks of streams and never beyond the sea- 

 breezes, and made a special note of it. On his return 

 to England he had the luck to find an expedition 

 being fitted out by the British Government principally 

 with a view to ascertaining the existence of any 

 navigable communication between the North Pacific 

 and the North Atlantic Oceans, which expedition was 



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