ORIGINAL COMMUNICATIONS. 



I. — A Short Account of the more Ornamental Evergreen Ber- 

 berries cultivated in the Gardens of Great Britain. By 

 Professor Lindley. 



So little is the public aware that there exists in England a 

 large class of most beautiful hardy Evergreen shrubs belonging 

 to the genus Berberis, that it has become an object of some 

 importance to bring them into notice. It is not too much to say 

 that among them are shrubs in no degree inferior for ornamental 

 purposes to Laurels and other similar exotic bushes. 



Some are from the West, some from the East. America has 

 contributed a large number, and has an abundance of others in 

 store to reward the enterprising collector. Nor does the warmer 

 part of Asia yield the palm in this respect. Already a crowd of 

 handsome strangers has reached us through the assistance of the 

 East India Company, and there are probably as many to follow 

 from the temperate mountains of that vast continent. 



In the following brief account I have sought to collect what 

 is most worth knowing about them ; but extended details have 

 not been introduced, because to have done so would have made 

 this paper more botanical than is desirable in a Horticultural 

 Journal. Let me hope that it will be the means of bringing to 

 light other as yet unknown species, not less deserving of culti- 

 vation than the best of those here spoken of. 



The Evergreen Berberries should be divided into three prin- 

 cipal groups, viz. — I. Those in which the leaves are simple and 

 the flowers solitary or fascicled in the axils of the leaves. II. 

 Those in which the leaves are simple and the flowers in length- 

 ened racemes or panicles. III. Those in which the leaves are 

 pinnated. In this order they are treated of here. 



I. Leaves simple. Flowers solitary, or, if in clusters, one only 

 on a stalk; the stalks all springing frotn the axils of leaves. 



1. The CROWBERRY-LEAVED Berberry. 



Berberis empetrifolia, Lamarck, Illustr., t. 253, f. 4. Bot. 

 Reg., 1840, t. 27. Sweet, British Flower Garden, ser. 

 2, t. 350. 



From the country lying between the Straits of Magellan and the 

 Cordillera near Valparaiso. 



vol. v. B 



