Independent gardening advice for real gardens, balconies and windowsills.
Practical advice on growing food and flowers, improving soil, and making the most of small spaces. Start anywhere — the garden will meet you.
The sequa or cacoon antidote of Jamaica. It belongs to the cucumber family, and climbs to a great height up the trunks of trees. The seeds are employed as a remedy in a variety of diseases, and are co...
This plant is known as the india-rubber tree. It is a native of the East Indies, and is the chief source of caoutchouc from that quarter of the globe, although other species of Ficus yield this gum, a...
The famous banyan tree of history. Specimens of this Indian fig are mentioned as being of immense size. One in Bengal spreads over a diameter of 370 feet. Another covered an area of 1,700 square yards...
The pippul tree of the Hindoos, which they hold in such veneration that, if a person cuts or lops off any of the branches, he is looked upon with as great abhorrence as if he had broken the leg of one...
A bushy shrub, used in India for hedges. Its fruit has a pleasant, subacid flavor when perfectly ripe, but the unripe fruit is extremely astringent. The Indian doctors use a liniment made of the bark...
This plant is closely related to the agave, and, like many of that genus, furnishes a fine fiber, which is known in St. Domingo as Cabuya fiber. These plants are very magnificent when in flower, throw...
A Brazilian plant called Mercurio vegetal; also known as Manaca. The roots, and to some extent the leaves, are used in medicine; the inner bark and all the herbaceous parts are nauseously bitter; it i...
A small tree of the Cape of Good Hope and Australia. It bears a globular fruit of the size of a small peach, and is known in Australia as the native peach. It has an edible nut, called the Quandang nu...
This South American tree furnishes Angostura bark, which has important medical properties, some physicians in South America preferring it to cinchona in the treatment of fevers. Its use has been great...
This tree produces the tropical fruit called mangosteen, a beautiful fruit, having a thick, succulent rind, which contains an astringent juice, and exudes a gum similar to gamboge. The esculent interi...
It is supposed that Siam gamboge is obtained from this tree, also that known as Ceylon gamboge. The juice is collected by incising the stems, or by breaking young twigs of the tree and securing the ye...
A fatty matter known as gamboge butter is procured from the seeds of this tree in Mysore. They are pounded in a stone mortar, then boiled till the butter or oil rises to the surface. It is used as a l...