RARE SHRUBS IN THE OPEN AIR. 



363 



I don't suppose there is a garden in England, including the one 

 at Aldenham, where all plants are rightly named ; even at Kew, the 

 Mecca of botanists, I have certainly seen specimens of the same tree with 

 different names, and of different trees with the same name. A study 

 of the Kew Handbook will show how much excuse there is for errors 

 in nomenclature. 



There will be found among the broad-leaved plants alone— eight 

 with eleven synonyms, three with twelve, one with thirteen, three with 

 fourteen, one with sixteen, one with seventeen, one with eighteen, one 

 with nineteen, and one (Spiraea canescens) with no less than twenty-four 

 synonyms ! 



Nor is this the worst of it, for there are plenty of cases where the 

 name adopted for a species by Kew is also the synonym adopted by other 

 botanists for a different species ; e.g., Crataegus flava is a true N. American 

 species, and is also a synonym for C. oxyacantha aurea. 



Euonymus atropurpureits is a true N. American species, and is also 

 the name for a variety of E. europaeus ; while to make " confusion worse 

 confounded," and darken counsel altogether, the names of two different 

 shrubs are sometimes interchanged ; e.g., the Ligustrum lucidum of Kew 

 is the Ligustrum japonicum of nurserymen, and the L. japonicum of 

 Kew is the L. lucidum of nurserymen. Some people might suppose 

 that when one had two similar plants under different names, or vice 

 versa, it would be very easy for an observant eye quickly to detect it, 

 but the reverse is the case ; the newcomer is probably sickly after 

 arrival, and does not assume its true foliage for two years ; it may 

 not flower for three or four years, and may in our climate never fruit 

 at all. 



Plants of the same species, when grown under different conditions, 

 and even in different situations in the same garden, may present super- 

 ficially a very different appearance. In truth a man must be a very 

 expert and studious botanist before he can assure himself with certainty 

 of all the plants in a large collection, and I hope that a consideration 

 of this fact will make my critics leniently view any oversights or 

 blunders into which I have fallen. 



Note. — The photographs from which the illustrations were made were most kindly 

 taken at Aldenham by Messrs. Carter's resident artist, Mr. G. H. C. Bard. 



