476 FLOWERS OF GARDEN AND GREENHOUSE 



nine. Fruit triangular, winged. Natives of Siberia, Himalaya, and 



Eastern Asia. 



Very little Rhubarb is grown in this country for 

 History. o^-namental purposes, yet where there is room one or two 

 plants make a very striking group of foliage and flower-spikes. The 

 liistory of the genus in the garden is really as medicinal and culinary 

 plants. Rheum Rhaponticum, a native of Siberia, is said to have been 

 introduced via Padua, 1573. R. undwlatum, another culinary species, 

 was introduced from Siberia in 1734. R. palmatum, which had been 

 introduced as a cultivated plant in 1763, was not discovered in its wild 

 state until Colonel Prejevalsky came across it in North-West China in 

 1873, and the R. oficinale was similarly unknown to us as a wild plant 

 until its introduction from Thibet in 1871. R. nobile is one of Sir 



Joseph Hooker's Himalayan dis 



Rheum Emodi (Emodus'). Flower - stem leafy, 6 to 



'10 feet high. Leaves heart-shaped, with red nerves, the 

 margins slightly wavy, the footstalks half round. Flowers whitish, in 

 a dense pyramidal panicle; June and July. Native of Himalaya. 

 Introduced 1823. 



R. NOBILE (noble). Stem 3 feet high. Leaves radical, bright green, 

 with red nerves and stalks. Floral bracts semi-transparent, straw- 

 coloured, the edges pink. Flowers insignificant, green, hidden by the bract. 

 R. OFFICINALE (of the shops). Stem 8 to 10 feet high, much branched. 

 Leaves large, roundish-kidney-shaped, with the margins cut into five 

 short unequally-toothed lobes. Flowers small, greenish, in dense spikes. 

 R. PALMATUM (palmate-leaved). Stem 5 feet high. Leaves rough, 

 broad -heart -shaped, palmately-lobed. Flowers greenish, small, in a 

 leafy panicle ; May. 



Rhubarbs succeed well in any rich, deep soil, and are 

 very suitable for planting at the back of shrubbery borders, 

 in the wild-garden, etc. They are easily propagated by division, or by 

 sowing seed in spring on a gentle hot-bed. 



AMARANTHS 



Natural Order Amaeantace^e. Genus Amarantus 



Amarantus (Greek, a, not, and muraino, to wither ; in allusion to the 

 persistent character of the flowers and coloured bracts). A genus of 

 about twelve coarse-growing hardy and half-hardy annual herbs with 



