276 A HISTORY OF GARDENING IN ENGLAND 
Consul-General, he continued actively botanizing, and estab¬ 
lished and maintained at his own expense an experimental 
garden at Zanzibar. Not only did he succeed in introducing 
many valuable economic plants into Central Africa, but sent 
a large number of flowers home. A successful pioneer in 
Central Africa was John Buchannan, who went in 1876 as 
Agriculturalist to the Church of Scotland Mission to Nyassa- 
land, and sent 1,500 dried specimens to Kew, and also intro¬ 
duced new living species to this country. Another worker in 
the mission-field who was also a collector was Alexander 
Carson, who died the same year as Buchannan (1896). Other 
Central African plants have been sent home more recently by 
Sir Harry Johnson and Mr. Alexander Whyte. 
One of the earliest workers at the Cape was James Bowie, 
who was sent out by Kew in 1817, and died there in 1869. 
During the early years of the century great numbers of heaths 
were sent home, also Mesembryanthemum, Polygalas, and Gera¬ 
niums. A good assortment of Cape plants were already in culti¬ 
vation by the end of the eighteenth century. Among the bulbs 
which had arrived about 1790, or even earlier, were Sparaxis, 
Ixias, Agapanthus, Crinums (capense or longifolium ), some of 
the Nerines, and the Arum lily. In spite of the constant 
influx of plants from the Cape, it is rather astonishing to find 
that some bulbs now extremely common did not put in an 
appearance in this country till towards the end of the century. 
Freesias, now so popular, only came in 1875 ; Montbretia 
Pottsii, which now grows like a weed in many places, not 
until two years later ; and the finer species of Crinum —Moorei 
in 1874, and the garden hybrid Powellii, which was produced 
from it, as late as 1888. 
South America contributed a number of striking plants to 
the stove during this great influx of flowers from all parts of 
the world. The immense water-lily, afterwards named Vic¬ 
toria regia, was first discovered in 1801, but was not generally 
known till forty years later, and seeds did not germinate in 
this country before 1849. Soon after the gigantic dimensions 
of the plant, as grown at Kew, caused a sensation which was 
not confined to the gardening world. The collector George 
Gardiner found no less than 7,000 species in Brazil, some of 
