Beautiful Flowering Shrubs 



of Trees and Shrubs in British Gardens," published in 

 1842. Of late years, however, it has been more 

 appreciated and is being widely grown. The name 

 Choisya was given it to keep in mind the researches 

 of M. J. D. Choisy, a Geneva botanist, who worked 

 with the celebrated scientist De Candolle, and wrote, in 

 particular, on the family of the St. John's Wort (1821). 



THE SKIMMIAS 



The Skimmias are evergreen shrubs of the same 

 type, but neater, primmer and smaller generally, and the 

 white flower-clusters are flatter and more formal. They 

 are natives of the East China and Japan and may 

 be said to be the eastern equivalents of the western 

 Mexican Orange. But they are marked by one great 

 distinction, their flowers are either male or female; that 

 is, some flowers have only stamens and no functional 

 seed-case, and other flowers possess a proper seed- 

 case but no fertilising stamens. In both cases, how- 

 ever, the flowers have the ring of five white petals, so 

 their superficial appearance is much the same. In 

 S. Fortunei both male and female flowers are borne by 

 the same plant, so every specimen of it is a berry- 

 bearer ; but in S. japonica the sexes are on different 

 shrubs, one shrub being wholly male while another 

 will be wholly female. 



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