originally posted: March 28, 2003 | by chelsie

Crabapples refer to those apple species producing fruit which are small and tart. Today, the trees are cultivated for their spring flowering, the size of the fruit has been 'bred-down' since most gardeners do not want to deal with small rotting apples in late summer. [Click here to read more...]

originally posted: March 21, 2002 | by chelsie

In 1597, John Gerard wrote, "The Sallow tree or Goats Willow groweth to a tree of a meane bignesse: the trunke or body is soft and hollow timber, covered with a whitish rough barke: the branches are set with leaves somewhat rough, greene above, and hoarie underneath: among which come forth round catkins, or aglets that turne into downe, which is carried away with the winde." Long before Linnaeus was born, the name, Salix caprea, was applied to these northern European willows. [Click here to read more...]

originally posted: March 14, 2003 | by chelsie

Book XII of Pliny the Elder's Natural History was dedicated to the exotic plants and spices of India, Egypt, and Mesopotamia. One of the spices mentioned was caryophyllon, literally, the "nut-leaf". After the fall of the Roman Empire, spice trade to Europe ceased. Six hundred years would pass until spices returned to Europe. From the 11th to 13th centuries, the Crusades went to liberate the Holy Land from Islamic control. Returning Crusaders told stories of the spices known in the Levant (eastern shore of the Mediterranean); Europeans wanted spices. [Click here to read more...]

originally posted: March 7, 2003 | by chelsie

Miss Ellen Willmott was born in 1858. Independently wealthy, gardening became her passion. She bought Warley Place and when she finished re-modeling the gardens, she bought a château in France and a villa on the Italian Riviera. She filled those gardens, too. [Click here to read more...]

originally posted: February 28, 2003 | by chelsie

The bottle gourd (Lagenaria siceraria (Molina) Standley) had a myriad of uses in human history, evidence the thousands of containers humans use today. People have always needed 'stuff' in which to put their 'stuff'. The gourd was ready-made. [Click here to read more...]

originally posted: February 21, 2003 | by chelsie

Auxin, chemically known as indole-3-acetic acid (IAA), is a plant hormone first discovered in 1926 by Frits W. Went, a plant physiologist. Manufactured from the amino acid, tryptophan, this hormone is produced in the leaf primordia (tissues that become leaves) and young leaves just below the actively growing tips (apical buds) of branches. Auxin moves cell to cell down through the plant. [Click here to read more...]

originally posted: February 14, 2003 | by chelsie

Linguistic, archaeological, and 'center of diversity' evidence places the domestication of Citrus fruits in China, Southeast Asia, and the Indus Valley around 4000 BCE. Ancient Arabs, Jews, Greeks, and Romans knew citrus in the form of the citron. Romans called the fruit, citrus or citrea, from the Greek, kitrea. Linnaeus kept the Latin for the generic designation. [Click here to read more...]

originally posted: February 7, 2003 | by chelsie

The elder has been a plant deeply respected since Roman times. Its botanical name is the same as its ancient Roman name, Sambucus. The meaning of the Latin name appears lost, though it was thought to derive from the Greek, sambuca, an ancient harp. The etymology does not hold well; elder wood lends more to the manufacture of wind instruments like flutes and pipes because the stems stay small and hollow easily. [Click here to read more...]

originally posted: January 31, 2002 | by chelsie

Indian pipes were named Monotropa uniflora "one-turn, single-flower" by Linnaeus in 1753. The pipes are apparently parasitic on fungi that have mycorrhizal relationships with photosynthesizing (green) plants. The visible portions are the 'Indian pipes', the flowering scapes seen in summer after a soaking rain. [Click here to read more...]

originally posted: January 24, 2002 | by chelsie

The ancient Greeks had two selinons--heleioselinon, marsh parsley, our celery (Apium graveolens var. dulce) and petroselinon, rock parsley, our parsley (Petroselinum crispum). Plutarch wrote of parsley "...it is the custom to place wreaths of this herb upon tombs--hence the saying concerning anyone who is dangerously ill, 'He needs nothing but his parsley.'" ("Timoleon", The Age of Alexander, Plutarch, 1st century, trans. Ian Scott-Kilvert, 1973) [Click here to read more...]

originally posted: January 17, 2003 | by chelsie

In old herbals, bracken was called Filix foemina or female fern. Linnaeus named it Pteris aquilina (eagle fern) for the pattern of the vessels in an oblique cross-section of the lower rachis. Though some thought the pattern appeared like an eagle with wings spread; others thought the pattern resembled the Greek chi, the initial of Christ, and provided protection from evil. [Click here to read more...]

originally posted: January 10, 2003 | by chelsie

Ipecac is an emetic (a drug that induces vomiting) derived from Cephaelis ipecacuanha (Brotero) A. Richard. The plants are native to Brazil and first mentioned in 1601 by Manoel Tristaon, a Jesuit missionary. The species epithet ipecacuanha is the plant's Portuguese name. According to the 1889 Century Unabridged Dictionary, the Portuguese name came from "ipecaaguen, the native name of the plant, said to mean 'smaller roadside sick-making plant'." [Click here to read more...]

originally posted: January 3, 2003 | by chelsie

Long before humans built houses, wild peas were part of the human diet. Dried peas were found in Hungarian caves among the remnants of early human habitation. Peas were discovered in archaeological digs in the ruins of Troy and in Swiss lake sediments beneath where the stilted homes of the lake dwellers stood. The Greeks called them pison, the Romans, pisum. Linnaeus retained the Roman name for the botanical designation. [Click here to read more...]