Beautiful Flowering Shrubs 



needs to be better known to make it increasingly 

 welcome. 



The Common Barberry is, of course, the original 

 one of our gardens, and it was of this plant that the 

 learned Dr. Culpepper wrote in the reign of Charles I, 

 " Mars owns this shrub and presents it to the use of 

 my countrymen to purge their bodies of choler." It is 

 usually said that it is really a true native of Great 

 Britain, and Gerard certainly declares in 1597 that 

 " the Barberry bush growes of it selfe in untoiled 

 places and desart grounds, in woods and the borders 

 of fields " ; but, on the other hand, we know that it 

 was one of those shrubs definitely planted by our 

 ancestors. 



"The barberry, respis and gooseberry, too, 

 Looke now to be planted as other things doo," 



runs a gardening rhyme of four centuries ago, and 

 Gerard himself mentions the planting of it in gar- 

 dens. Then it was cultivated with a utilitarian object, 

 for the tender leaves with their acid juices were largely 

 used in "sallets," or "stamped" and made into a green 

 sauce which, we are told, "doth coole hot stomacks and 

 procureth appetite." The scarlet, bead-like fruits, too, 

 were transformed into a conserve that, in those days 

 of less variety in these matters, was much esteemed, 

 and the liking for which still lingers in certain districts. 



'We consider our barberries as not the least impor- 



26 



