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William Prince Jr. and his son William Robert Prince (above) authored seminal American horticultural manuals. In 
A Treatise on the Vine, published in 1830, they promoted new grape varieties, including ‘Isabella’, which became a 
favorite of American viticulturists. 
with two solid Dutch doors on either end and 
a bust of Linnaeus (likely from his father) on a 
bracket against the wall. The house’s formal 
gardens contained two ginkgos (Ginkgo biloba}, 
which were among the oldest in the country, 
and an old cedar of Lebanon (Cedrus libani) that 
the Princes had imported from France. 
Under William Robert’s leadership, however, 
the business began to struggle. In the 1830s, 
he speculated heavily in the domestic silk 
industry and may have been a key contributor 
to the skyrocketing prices for mulberry trees 
(Morus alba), the food source for silkworms. He 
imported more than one million mulberry trees 
from France in 1839, and shortly afterward, the 
price for mulberry trees crashed. When this 
venture failed, the Princes could not keep up 
with mortgage payments on the nursery, and 
by 1841, they lost the Linnaean Botanic Gar- 
den and Nurseries in foreclosure. These events 
spawned a bitter controversy with the property’s 
new owner, Gabriel Winter, who was married to 
one of William Jr.’s cousins. Although William 
Robert continued to raise and sell plants from 
an adjacent nursery property, he and Winter 
competed in horticultural publications over 
ALAA BOUT AIOE 
the right to sell plants as the Linnaean Botanic 
Garden and Nurseries. Ultimately, the Princes 
kept the name, and Winter sold the remain- 
ing plant inventory and subdivided the original 
property for housing development. 
By 1846, the finances at the new Prince nurs- 
ery began to stabilize, and William Robert pub- 
lished Prince’s Manual of Roses, his third and 
final significant contribution to horticultural 
literature. At his new botanic garden, William 
Robert grew over seven hundred rose varieties, 
and the book provided detailed descriptions of 
varieties and featured many roses from China. 
He also included information about horticul- 
tural care and propagation. It was one of the 
very best works on this subject. Still, it was 
eclipsed in popularity by Samuel B. Parsons’s 
book published the following year: The Rose: 
Its History, Poetry, Culture, and Classification. 
Parsons—the proprietor of Parsons Nursery in 
Flushing—ultimately revised his book as Par- 
sons on the Rose: A Treatise on the Propaga- 
tion, Culture, and History of the Rose. The 
competition between these books suggests 
the horticultural foment that was occurring in 
Flushing during this period. 
HEDRICK, 1908 AND 1911/ARCHIVE OF THE ARNOLD ARBORETUM 
