Wealden Times | WT184 | June 2017 | Kitchen & Bathroom supplement inside

Begonia ‘Sceptre’
clematis are worth getting to know. I particularly like
Clematis ‘Blekitny Aniol’ which is so much easier to imagine
when you know that the name means ‘Blue Angel’.
In the wild there are plants that evolve that are similar
to their species but that are subtly different maybe due
to the conditions they have adapted to for survival.
So just to complicate matters, a subspecies is a variant
on the species and would be recognised in the plant’s
description by writing first the Genus, then the species
and then subsp. and finally the subspecies name. An
example might be one of Gertrude Jekyll’s favourite
plants, the spectacular Mediterranean spurge and well
known to gardeners, Euphorbia characias subsp. wulfenii
Finally, very many plants have names which
commemorate great gardeners or the intrepid plant
hunters who brought plants in to cultivation and who
had the most extraordinary experiences all over the
far flung corners of the world whilst doing so.
Sir Joseph Banks is often thought of as the father of plant
hunting. He came from an affluent family in the eighteenth
century and rather than take the Grand Tour to Italy as
many young men of means did then he decided to take his
tour ‘around the globe’. He joined an expedition on board
HMS Endeavour to the South Seas under the captaincy of
Captain James Cook. The Admiralty ostensibly sent the ship
out to observe the transit of Venus in the South Seas. Can
you imagine how exciting this must have been for the young
Banks as he saw it as an opportunity to collect both flora
and fauna during the journey. The extraordinary story of the
HMS Endeavour’s epic journey is well worth reading but
Banks’s legacy lives on in the establishment of Kew Gardens
as a centre for botanical excellence and in the approximately
eighty species of plant named after him and in the case of the
glorious early Banksian rose, after his wife, Lady Dorothea.
For more information, see:
• Stearn’s Dictionary of Plant Names for Gardeners by William
T. Stearn published by Cassell. ISBN. 0-304-34149-5
• The Plant Hunters, Two Hundred Years of
Adventure and Discovery Around the World. Toby
Musgrave, Chris Gardner, Will Musgrave.
Published by Seven Dials. ISBN. 1-84188-001-9
Sue Whigham can be contacted on 07810
457948 for gardening advice and the sourcing
and supplying of interesting garden plants.
Garden Design and Landscaping
01797 260 451 07831 868 848
info@gardeneye.co.uk | www.gardeneye.co.uk
GardenEyeWT184.indd 1 23/05/2017 09:51
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155 wealdentimes.co.uk
GardenproudWT184.indd 1 19/05/2017 12:40