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.
This plant has been recommended for profitable culture in this country for its edible root-stock. It is cultivated in the Sandwich Islands under the name of Tara. The young leaves are cooked and eaten...
This plant belongs to the cinchona family, and contains tonic properties. The Peruvian bark gatherers adulterate the true cinchona bark with this, but it may be detected by its white inner surface, it...
This plant furnishes the scammony of the druggists.
A small-growing tree from China, which produces a fruit known as the Wampee. This fruit is a globular berry, with five or fewer compartments filled with juice. It is much esteemed in China.
This tree yields balsam of copaiba, used in medicine. The balsam is collected by making incisions in the stem, when the liquor is said to pour out copiously; as it exudes it is thin and colorless, but...
The Carnuba, or wax palm of Brazil. It grows about 40 feet high, and has a trunk 6 or 8 inches thick, composed of very hard wood, which is commonly employed in Brazil for building and other purposes....
A cinchonaceous shrub. The leaves of this plant were formerly used in some of the religious ceremonies of the New Zealanders.
This produces succulent, mucilaginous, and emollient fruits, which are eaten. These qualities, combined with a slight astringency, have led to their use as pectorals, known as Sebestens. The wood of t...
The Australian Ti, or cabbage tree, a palm-like plant of 15 to 20 feet in height. The whole plant is fibrous, and it has been suggested as good for a paper-making material. The juice of the roots and...
The Talipot palm, a native of Ceylon, producing gigantic fan-like leaves. These leaves have prickly stalks 6 or 7 feet long, and when fully expanded form a nearly complete circle of 13 feet in diamete...
The fruit of this tree is called, from its appearance, the cannon-ball fruit; its shell is used as a drinking vessel, and when fresh the pulp is of an agreeable flavor.
This West Indian tree yields a small fruit which has a strong smell of garlic, hence it is called the garlic pear. The bark is bitter and used as a tonic.