134 GOEDONIA. 



The founding of Gordonia on an American plant. 



The first Gordonia to become known was the American Loblol- 

 ly Bay. In the eighteenth century it was a by-no-means rare 

 shrub in the gardens of the curious in Natural History in Western 

 Europe, as, from its home on the Atlantic seaboard from Mary- 

 land southwards to the mouths of the Mississippi, its seeds had 

 been easy to procure, and the plant which attains the size of a 

 tree in its own home, was found to flower in hot houses as a shrub. 

 Linnaeus, as early as 1737, named it Hypericum Lasianthus when 

 writing his catalogue of Clifford's garden, and repeated this name 

 in his Species plantarum. Then John Ellis, a London merchant, 

 who interested himself especially in what ships could bring him 

 from the New World, upon the examination of a plant which flower- 

 ed at Clapham, cut it apart from the genus Hypericum, and named 

 it Gordonia (1770) after a well-known nurseryman, James Gordon 

 then living in London. 



From another plant cultivated at Vauxhall, on the outskirts 

 of London, John Sims in 1802 figured flowers and foliage on plate 

 668 of the Botanical Magazine. 



Linnaeus accepted the name Gordonia from the first and used 

 it in his Mantissa plantarum altera, 1771, p. 570. 



Into the genus Gordonia so established, another American 

 plant was soon placed, — G. pubescens, (L'Heritier, Stirpes novae, 

 1784, p. 156), a tree found like G. Lasianthus on the Atlantic sea- 

 board of the United States. , 



Gordonia found in Asia, but called Camellia. 



On American soil, Gordonia has proved to be confined to these 

 two species, the second of which is now reported extinct in a wild 

 state. But above a score of species have been found in Asia. 



At first there was some confusion among the European 

 botanists in the East as to what should be called Gordonia, so 

 that we meet with G. oblata and G. integrifolia in Eoxburgh's 

 works, and G. Chilaunia in Buchanan-Hamilton's, applied to what 

 is now regarded as Schima: and there occurs a G. spectabilis in the 

 manuscript of William Hunter, of 1803 (printed in Journal No. 

 54, 1909, p. 104) which is doubtless also a Schima. At the same 



period, but on the other hand, a true Gordonia of Chinese origin 

 found its way into the genus Camellia. This last is the G. axillaris 

 of Hongkong, — the first recorded plant of which was brought to the 

 London nursery of Messrs. Whitley, Brames and Milne. In Decem- 

 ber, 1818, it flowered for the first time, and both the then-existing 

 rival illustrated London botanical journals, — the Botanical Maga- 

 zine and the Botanical Register, — obtained a drawing and both 

 published under the date of February 1st, 1819. So similar are 

 these two plates which we know came from the same plant, that 



Jour. Straits Branch 



