The Flowering Currants 



America to the gardens of the Horticultural Society at 

 Chiswick, and there they were planted in an open 

 border in the spring of 1828. Two years later they 

 were flourishing plants flowering in great profuseness 

 the first of the myriad Flowering Currant bushes to 

 deck our land. Douglas himself regarded his find as 

 " one of the finest and most interesting additions that 

 have been made to our shrubberies for many years," 

 and he believed that, " few plants possess greater claim 

 to our attention as an ornamental shrub than Ribes 

 sanguineum" * (It may be remarked that the memory 

 of both Menzies and Douglas is kept green in the 

 names of certain plants ; the former in the Menziesia, 

 a group of heath-like plants, and the latter in the 

 Douglas Pine.) David Douglas came to an untimely 

 end in the Sandwich Isles by falling into a wild beast 

 snare dug by natives. Unfortunately it caught a beast 

 as well as the explorer, and only the former survived the 

 encounter. 



The generic name Ribes, which designates, of 

 course, the whole group of Gooseberries and Red and 

 Black Currants, is derived from an Arabian word given 

 by Arabian physicians to certain acid berries, probably 

 those of species of Rheum growing in the East ; later 

 this name was transferred by the herbalists to the 



* Again and again in his Journal (recently published by the R.H.S.) he ex- 

 presses pleasure. 



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