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.
Jamaica or West India ebony tree. This is not the plant that yields the true ebony-wood of commerce. Jamaica ebony is of a greenish-brown color, very hard, and so heavy that it sinks in water. It take...
A Brazilian plant, furnishing an astringent bark used for tanning, and also containing a red coloring matter employed in dyeing. The berries are used in medicine, and a decoction of the roots is used...
A plant of the nettle family, which yields the fiber known as Chinese grass. The beautiful fabric called grasscloth, which rivals the best French cambric in softness and fineness of texture, is manufa...
A tropical plant, bearing the seeds known as nicker nuts, or bonduc nuts. These are often strung together for necklaces. The kernels have a very bitter taste, and the oil obtained from them is used me...
This beautiful flowering leguminous plant is a native of the East Indies, but is cultivated in all the tropics. In Jamaica it is called the "Barbados flower." The wood is sought after for charcoal, an...
The brownish-red wood of this Indian tree furnishes the Sappan wood of commerce, from which dyers obtain a red color, principally used for dyeing cotton goods. Its root also affords an orange-yellow d...
This is one of the palms that furnish the canes or rattans used for chair bottoms, sides of pony-carriages, and similar purposes. It is a climbing palm and grows to an immense length; specimens 300 fe...
A medium-sized tree from Australia; one of the many so-called tea trees of that country. The wood, which is very hard, is known as stone wood and has been used for wood engraving. Layers of the bark r...
This coniferous plant is a native of Barbary. It yields a hard, durable, and fragrant timber, and is much employed in the erection of mosques, etc., by the Africans of the North. The resin that exudes...
This is called calaba tree in the West Indies, and an oil, fit for burning, is expressed from the seeds. In the West Indies these seeds are called Santa Maria nuts.
The inner bark of this plant yields a valuable fiber, capable of bearing a greater strain than hemp. All parts of it abound in a very acrid milky juice, which hardens into a substance resembling gutta...
A well-known green-house plant, cultivated for its large double flowers. The seeds furnish an oil of an agreeable odor, which is used for many domestic purposes.