Independent gardening advice for real gardens, balconies and windowsills.
A growing reference library of gardening terms, techniques and climate concepts explained in plain language.
This palm grows all over South America. It is known as the great macaw-tree. A sweetish-tasted oil, called Mucaja oil, is extracted from the fruit and is used for making toilet soaps.
The baobab tree, a native of Africa. It has been called the tree of a thousand years, and Humboldt speaks of it as "the oldest organic monument of our planet." Adanson, who traveled in Senegal in 1794...
A tree that furnishes red sandal wood. A dye is obtained simply by rubbing the wood against a wet stone, which is used by the Brahmins for marking their foreheads after religious bathing. The seeds ar...
This plant is extolled for its charcoal in the manufacture of powder. The flowers, leaves, roots, and especially the fruit, are considered antispasmodic, and are administered in India in asthma and in...
This plant belongs to the orange family, and its fruit is known in India as Bhel fruit. It is like an orange; the thick rind of the unripe fruit possesses astringent properties, and, when ripe, has an...
This plant is commonly known as American aloe, but it is not a member of that family, as it claims kindred with the _Amaryllis_ tribe of plants. It grows naturally in a wide range of climate, from the...
Granada, and Murcia by the Moors. In the fifteenth century it was introduced into the Canary Islands by the Spaniards and to Madeira by the Portuguese, and thence to the West India Islands and to Braz...
Jesuit's bark. It was brought most particularly into notice when Louis XIV of France purchased of Sir R. Talbor, an Englishman, his heretofore secret remedy for intermittent fever, and made it public....