查看更多>>摘要：THE YEAR 1974 was not a great one for gardening. There was still a feeling of financial unease in the air; the comparative prosperity we enjoy today was a distant prospect. There were people, and several at the RHS, who thought gardening at an ambitious level was a thing of the past. The term 'head gardener' sounded like something from an Oscar Wilde play. True, there was Hillier's nursery maintaining its astonishing catalogue of woody plants, and specialists round the country nursing their passions.But without, I suspect, much hope of a great gardening renaissance.Even the RHS had a moment of self-doubt, financially speaking, in 1974, after the Arab / Israeli war had quadrupled the price of oil in six months. The FTSE lost 73%. This is how I came to be involved with the Society and its journal.
查看更多>>摘要：THE BEST WAY to sum up Marimurtra Botanical Garden at Blanes in Catalonia is to say that it is quite like the Hanbury garden at La Mortola, but better maintained and with a larger collection of plants. There is another difference: the visitor to La Mortola is welcomed with a splendid and expansive overview of the whole garden, whereas Marimurtra reveals its most spectacular prospect at the far end of the garden.Marimurtra occupies a steep headland above the sea on the Costa Brava, Spain's most beautiful Mediterranean coastline. The garden was made by a German businessman called Karl Faustbetween 1918 and his death in 1952. Faust was born in 1874 to a Jewish family in Hadamar, Germany, and came to Barcelona in 1897 to work for a German company. In 1909 he set up his own hydraulic engineering business. It flourished, and still has branches throughout Spain, so Faust was able to retire at the age of 50 in 1924. He then devoted himself to developing his botanic garden.
查看更多>>摘要：IMPLICIT IN CONSIDERING trees in towns as a case apart - as this series is doing - is the idea that they face unique challenges and must be uniquely tough. Most of the urban trees I have so far featured in fact enjoy suitable soils and side-shelter in parks and cemeteries. To find the true survivors, we must look at city-centre trees and, especially, street plantings.
查看更多>>摘要：NEARLY ALL 20 genera of the phlox family Polemoniaceae are native to the Americas with flower colour splitting neatly along a north-south axis according to pollinator preference. Red colours are found on the tropical members, such as Cantua buxifolia,to attract hummingbirds; those at temperate latitudes, like Phlox paniculata, have purple flowers pollinated by butterflies. In the far north blue colours are produced to attract bees (bees cannot see red) as is the case in Polemonium whose members mostly have blue flowers. The Phlox family is united by having parts in fives with calyx and corolla tubular. The ovary is comprised of three carpels and is surrounded by a nectar-producing disc at the base of the corolla.
查看更多>>摘要：THE NORTH ATLANTIC islands that comprise Macaronesia - the Canary Islands, Madeira, Azores and Cape Verde -have long held a special interest for naturalists. Many species found there are closely related to native British plants yet, due to their isolated island evolution, they have become quite distinct, some becoming giants. The remoteness of Macaronesia has made it an endemism hotspot, providing a home for some very curious species.Notable botanists such as Sir Hans Sloane and Sir Joseph Banks visited Macaronesia on early voyages of discovery, collecting plants. Sloane's specimens from the Canary Islands formed the nucleus of the herbarium at London's Natural History Museum (NHM)and many other collections from those early voyages are also housed at the NHM. These have played a key role in documenting the diversity of the North Atlantic islands.
查看更多>>摘要：MY OLD COLLINS LATIN dictionary offers only two English adjectives as a translation for the Latin 'insignis', namely 'distinguished' and 'conspicuous'. Although each has a different meaning, both apply perfectly to one of the most spectacular trees that can be grown in Britain: Pterocarya macroptera var. insignis.
查看更多>>摘要：DOWN THE QUAINT little passage called | Mawson's Row in Chiswick, surrounding the sash windows and covering the three-storey walls of the 18th century Head Brewer's Cottage of the Griffin Brewery, grows a giant specimen of Wisteria sinensis. The planthas layered itself into the deep and wide bed given to it, made from the same London stock bricks as those of the brewer's house. The building is surrounded by the huge Fuller's brewery, a stone's throw from the picturesque Chiswick Mall along the RiverThames.
查看更多>>摘要：MOUNTAINS ARE SCATTERED across eastern Africa like islands rising from the lowlands. Some are volcanic in origin, others uplifted by the continental writhing that has also produced the Great Rift Valley, which trenches through the continent from the Red Sea to Mozambique. The plants of this Afromontane Archipelago, as it's known, have fascinated me for thirty years. Most famous are the giant lobelias and groundsels from the higher peaks, but the flora is diverse, changing from mountain to mountain.
查看更多>>摘要：Seeds have been classified into two general groups: orthodox and recalcitrant (non-orthodox).The first group, orthodox seeds, probably got their name because these seeds behave very much like the seeds that have been collected and stored for thousands of years. After collection, they can be dried and stored for a long time. This group makes up 80% of all seeds.The second group of seeds have been researched more recently and have become known as recalcitrant (having an obstinately uncooperative attitude). In the early days these seeds seemed impossible to germinate, but now we know that they die when they dry out or are stored too cold.
查看更多>>摘要：THE FLORA OF Nepal is one of the best known in the Himalaya but it still retains some of its secrets and it has been my gooc fortune to have unlocked a few of them during my various travels.I was enthused by mountains before I became excited by plants, but these two interests soon merged together and collectively influenced my life. At an early age I was drawn to the high hills of Britain where my clamberings in the Black Cuillin of Skye allowed me to locate Arabis alpina in its only known site in Britain, while later in Snowdonia I tracked down the elusive Lloydia serotina on the cliffs of Cwm Idwal.
NSTL