12 
PLIARMACAL PLANTS AND THEIR CULTURE. 
ments. For example, if it is desired to begin the culture of digitalis, a 
competent man should be sent to the digitalis fields of England, secure 
employment as a laborer, and carefully record the cultural methods, 
methods of curing, garbling, packing, shipping, marketing, etc. In the 
course of a few months, or perhaps one season, he should be in a position 
to give reliable and exact advice as to how to begin the successful 
culture of English digitalis in California, and should be in position to 
take charge of, and superintend, the field work, etc. As to what addi- 
tional or new may be desirable in the way of methods, machinery, 
devices, etc., must be determined by experience and inventive genius. 
Similarly, the culture of camomile, chicory, and bittersweet should be 
studied in Germany; licorice, saffron, squill, and belladonna culture in 
Spain; licorice and rheum culture in Turkey and Asia, etc. 
Following these suggestions would in the end prove most profitable. 
Much may, of course, be learned from the several attempts that have 
already been made in this country, particularly in California. For 
example, hops, insect flower, chicory, canaigre, English mustard, calen- 
dula, lavendula, tak oak, eucalyptus, rose (American Beauty), poppy, 
cardamom, ginger, have been grown and marketed with more or less 
success, to say nothing of the staple crops as onions, sugar-beets, oranges, 
lemons, limes, olives, carob, asparagus, celery, Indian hemp (for fiber), 
etc., and the native medicinal plants as cascara, yerba santa, yerba 
buena, yerba mansa, berberis, manzanita, and others. Numerous gin- 
seng gardens have been established within recent years in different parts 
of the United States. 
Most of the medicinal plants, like most other economic plants, require 
rich, well-tilled soil. Some thrive best in a moist, rich soil, as rhubarb, 
belladonna, aconite, luffa, and colocynth, while others thrive better in a 
rich, sandy, comparatively dry soil, as cacti, aloes, digitalis, and 
mustard. Some require shade, as hydrastis, ginseng, May apple, wild 
ginger, etc. Some require rich, somewhat marshy, soil, as the mints, 
wild ginger, calamus, and iris. These are all data which must be care- 
fully considered by those who are about to enter upon drug culture. 
It will be found that most of the plants recommended for cultivation 
are herbs or herbaceous, either annuals, biennials, or perennials. In 
the case of biennials it is, of course, necessary to wait two seasons for a 
marketable crop, as with digitalis, whereas some perennials, as rhubarb 
and ginseng, require a wait of three or four years before a crop can be 
marketed. 
In conclusion, it is desired to call attention to the possibilities in 
extending the range of successful plant culture, in many instances. 
We need only recall the extension northward of the orange and lemon 
culture in California. There is no doubt that many drug-yielding and 
other plants of the tropics and sub-tropics, which are now considered 
