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 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...
Cape Jasmines, so called from a supposition that they were natives of the Cape of Good Hope. The genus belongs to the cinchona family. _G. lucida_ furnishes a fragrant resin somewhat similar to myrrh....
A leguminous plant, having poisonous properties. In western Australia, where it is a native, farmers often lose their cattle through their eating the foliage. Cats and dogs that eat the flesh of these...