HISTOKY 7 



pany and in 1784 published his Flora Japonica, the first post-Linnaean 

 work on the flora of the Orient. Thunberg mentions the Azaleas under 

 their vernacular names and relegates them all to Azalea indica. Ac- 

 cording to Juel (PI. Thurib. 391 (1918)) they represent R. obtusum 

 Planch., R. japonicum Suring. and R. mucronatum G. Don. 



Lastly in this connection mention must be made of Philipp von Sie- 

 bold, who joined the service of the Dutch East India Company and 

 lived at Deshima from 1823 «to 1829. To him we owe the magnificent 

 Flora Japonica; also he introduced about 1830 such ornamental plants 

 as IAlium elegans and L. speciosum from Japanese gardens, and, twenty 

 years later, several others including Malus floribunda, M. Sieboldii 

 and certain flowering Cherries. 



About 1677 the English East India Company established a factory 

 at Amoy and in 1684, after a conflict with the Portuguese, one at 

 Canton. Through this company many Chinese plants were introduced 

 to India during the 18th century and early in the 19th century to 

 England; they include several Azaleas. However, in China the Jesuit 

 priests were the first to inform us about the flora of the land. In 1790 

 Joannis de Loureiro, a Portuguese, published his Flora Cochinchinensis 

 and mentions one species of Azalea (A. punctata), but this remains an 

 obscure plant and may not belong to the genus. 



During the last quarter of the 17th century Jakob Breyne, a 

 merchant of Danzig and a distinguished botanist, visited Holland and 

 saw growing there several famous garden plants of the Orient which 

 he duly records in his Prodromus Plantarum. On page 24, pt. I, pub- 

 lished in 1680, we read " Chamaerhododendron exoticum amplissimus 

 floribus liliaceis. Frutex spectabilis elegans. In horto Beveringiano." 

 This is the plant on which Linnaeus (Spec. 1753) bases his Azalea 

 indica. Breyne does not say from what country this shrub had been 

 brought, but P. Hermann, in his Academici Horti lugduno-batavi 

 catalogus, p. 152 (1687), describes the same plant under the name of 

 "Cistus Indicus Ledi alpini foliis, floribus amplis," figures it on page 

 153, and reports that it was introduced from Jaccatra, which is Ba- 

 tavia, in Java. No species of Azalea grows in India, and it has been 

 generally supposed that this Azalea had been brought to Batavia by 

 the Chinese, but I am of the opinion that it was taken there from Japan 

 by Dutch traders. In the gardens of Nagasaki and elsewhere, then 

 as now, it was a common garden plant and, moreover, it is indigenous 

 in the warm southern parts of Japan. That at the early date men- 

 tioned plants from Japan were growing in gardens in Holland is certain, 



