362 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



mental as to find that I highly recommend, say, Lonicera spinosa or 

 Euonymus alatus. 



Wherever I could I have adopted the nomenclature of the Kew 

 handbook, often adding (in brackets) the more common synonym by 

 which it is known in the trade. Although I have taken the greatest 

 pains it is of course possible that, in one or two cases, I may have really 

 described one species when I thought I was describing another. 



For years past some of the most eminent experts in shrubs and • 

 trees, both English and foreign, have visited our garden, and wherever 

 I was in doubt as to the identification of a plant I have eagerly 

 and humbly sought for their pronouncement. Alas ! it is not uncommon 

 for them flatly to contradict one another. We have a rose which, 

 under this process, has changed its name three times : at the moment 

 it is B. nitida. 



The cheap and excellent Kew handbook of trees and shrubs is 

 invaluable to any collector who wishes to know what he is buying. I 

 can imagine a beginner ordering from a foreign catalogue Parthenocissus 

 tricuspidata, and, having expected to secure an interesting rarity, being 

 disgusted to find that he had bought the commonest of creepers. Later 

 on the same man, having got a learned friend to give him the correct 

 names of his plants, might say, pointing to it, " There is one, at any 

 rate, of which I need not ask you the right name, for every one knows 

 that it is Ampelopsis Veitchii," to which his friend would reply, 

 " Oh dear, no, that is quite out of date nowadays ; it is Vitis 

 inconstans ! " 



No one who has not attempted to make a collection of shrubs and get 

 them correctly named can realise the difficulties involved. Let me point 

 out some of them. The names adopted by Kew and followed in this paper 

 are those which, as far as can be ascertained, were first given to the plants ; 

 they are not adopted, I believe, by any other country, nor by the bulk of 

 nurserymen in this. Plants which for fifty years have been popularly 

 known under one name appear in this system under another ; e.g., the old 

 Alexandrian laurel, Busctis racemosus is now Danaea Laurus, and Citrus 

 trifoliata has become Acgle sepiaria. 



There are very few nurseries indeed where one can be sure of obtaining 

 plants true to name. Of course there may be cases where nurserymen 

 who have not a particular species in stock send out another which they 

 think will do as well, but usually the trouble arises from bond fide error 

 in identification ; e.g., if Schizophragma hydrangeoides is asked for 

 Hydrangea scandem is almost invariably supplied ; if Deutzia scabra, 

 a form of D. crenata ; if Shepherdia argentea, then Elaeagnus argentaa ; 

 and I could add many others to this list if it were worth while. Again, 

 plants are often sold under names botanically incorrect and to which 

 they have no title ; thus Bosea AmJierstiana appears in catalogues as 

 a variegated form of Leycesteria formosa, and Bhus toxicodendron as 

 Ampelopsis Iloggii, though it is a Sumach and not a Vine. 



In this way confusion arises, and a man who has bought a plant 

 under a wrong name, and learnt for years to identify it wrongly, teaches 

 the wrong name to visitors, and disseminates error when he fancies 

 himself to be enlightening ignorance. 



