1870.] Foreign Trees and Plants for English Gardens. 351 



and the gardener have it in their power to naturalise plants foreign 

 to our climate and our soil. 



But the conditions of this naturalisation are by no means so 

 simple as might at first sight appear. It might naturally be sup- 

 posed that all we have to do is to introduce those plants which grow 

 spontaneously in a climate and a soil similar to our own, and that 

 they will necessarily flourish, and will scarcely be aware of the change. 

 Or, if they come from a warmer country, that all that is needed is to 

 protect them by glass and artificial warmth from the inclemency of 

 our winters. But in practice this is not found to be the case. A 

 plant will frequently obstinately refuse to become naturalised in a 

 country, the climatal and geological conditions of which are similar 

 to those that occur in the region where it is indigenous. Our 

 common daisy, a native of almost every country of Europe, is said to 

 have resisted all attempts to introduce it even into the gardens of the 

 United States. Some plants seem to have an unconquerable aversion 

 to the fostering hand of man, even in their own country. A well- 

 constructed and carefully-kept fernery will contain specimens, more 

 or less luxuriant, of nearly all our native ferns ; the polypody and 

 hartstongue from shady banks and tree-stumps ; the so-called male 

 and female ferns from the woods ; the spleenwort from dry walls ; 

 even the royal " flowering-fern " from bogs ; and some of the semi- 

 alpine species will flourish with the exercise of a little care. One 

 kind, however, is almost invariably absent, and that the most widely 

 distributed of all our ferns, the common brake, a native of every county 

 and almost of every parish in the country, but which can seldom 

 be induced to remain a denizen of soil that has once been brought 

 under man's dominion. On the other hand, some of the greatest 

 favourites of our gardens, which display no coyness whatever in over- 

 running our flower-beds, are natives of countries where the climate 

 presents very different features to our own, or of very limited tracts 

 of our own country, to which they seem strictly confined by impas- 

 sable barriers of soil or meteorological conditions. To take instances 

 of the latter phenomenon : — There is no garden flower more cos- 

 mopolitan in its tastes, more certain to thrive under any conditions 

 of light or heavy soil, sun or shade, care or neglect, even in the 

 heart of a town, as its very name seems to indicate, than the London 

 Pride. Yet the Saxifraga umbrosa is one of the most restricted 

 in distribution of our native plants. Abundant enough where it 

 does grow, it is yet entirely confined to the moist equable climate 

 of the hilly country in the south-west of Ireland and a few other 

 similar localities, beyond which it is never found in the wild state. 

 Botanists will think themselves amply repaid for a toilsome day's 

 march by gathering the beautiful Polemonium eseruleum in its 

 native habitat among the calcareous hills of the west of Yorkshire ; 

 yet the Jacob's Ladder is an ornament of every garden on the very 



