A Florilegium

Sheffield's Hidden Garden

• Editore: The Crowood Press
• Anno: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781785008955
• Argomento: Art
• Categoria: Art General

This lavish book highlights a selection of the wonderful illustrations held in the archive of TheFlorilegium Society at Sheffield Botanical Gardens. Each illustration included in the book isaccompanied by a plant profile, stating where the plant was found in the wild and explainingsomething of its history, uses and botany. The book also gives an introduction to florilegia datingfrom the early herbals, and a history of the Society's Herbarium and the Gardens themselves. Featuring over 100 colour illustrations and 67 plant profiles, it is a book for everyone to enjoy, whatever the season.The Botanical Gardens are in the heart of the City of Sheffield and are a much-loved venue enjoyedboth by the people of Sheffield and visitors to the City. This book has been written by the Society's founding chair Valerie Oxley.Valerie developed the diploma in Botanical Illustration with colleagues at the University of Sheffield.

The plants and their profiles

Acer griseum (Franch.) Pax

Family: Sapindaceae

Acer griseum is an attractive, small, slow-growing deciduous tree, with coppery-brown bark that peels away from the trunk but does not fall immediately to the ground. It is known as the paperbark maple. The opposite leaves are made up of three leaflets on short stalks; the margins of the leaves have large rounded teeth. In the autumn the leaves turn from green to a warm reddish-brown colour. The meaning of Acer is maple tree and griseum means grey, a reference to the colour of the downy underside of the leaves.

Acer griseum
Artist: Sheila Stancill
Graphite pencil and watercolour
Accepted to the Archive 2006

The tree was originally described by the French botanist Adrien René Franchet who worked at the Natural History Museum in Paris. Franchet was well known for his taxonomic work on the flora of China and Japan, which was based on plants collected by French missionaries, one of whom was Père Paul Guillaume Farges.

Farges, a missionary and a naturalist, was sent to China in 1867, where he enthusiastically collected plant specimens, many of which were later described by Franchet. He is reputed to have collected over 4,000 specimens in eleven years. In 1892 he collected Acer griseum near Chengkou and in 1894 Franchet described the plant as a variety of Japanese maple, which he called Acer nikoense var. griseum.

Ernest Henry Wilson arrived in Hong Kong from Britain in 1899. He collected many of the plants that Farges had recorded, including the Japanese maple, Acer griseum. Wilson worked at the Birmingham Botanical Gardens before becoming a student at Kew under the Director, William Turner Thistleton-Dyer. Thistleton-Dyer recommended him to the Veitch Nurseries for a proposed visit to China. On the way to China he visited the Arnold Arboretum in America where he met the Director, Charles Sprague Sargent.

Wilson introduced A. griseum into Britain as seed in 1901. Germination of the seed at the Veitch Nurseries was very successful and in 1907 it was introduced to the Arnold Arboretum in the form of two seedlings. Most trees in Britain and the US today originate from the Veitch collection. An Irish botanist, Augustine Henry, was also thought to have collected A. griseum in China. Henry had studied medicine and Chinese and worked as a customs officer in Central and Western China.

The naming of A. griseum in 1902 is attributed to Ferdinand Albin Pax, a German botanist. He was assistant to the German botanist Heinrich Gustav Adolf Engler, who was Professor of Botany and Director of the Botanical Garden in Berlin. Pax described several species of plants and animals.

A. griseum is a handsome ornamental tree; it is suitable for a small garden and received an Award of Garden Merit from the Royal Horticultural Society in 1936. The seeds are not always viable and can be difficult to germinate by non-horticultural specialists. The small yellow-green flowers are pollinated by insects and hang on downy stems in small groups. Winged fruits, which are dispersed by wind, turn from green to brown as they dry.

Aesculus hippocastanum L.

Family: Sapindaceae

The horse chestnut, named Aesculus hippocastanum by Carl Linnaeus, is a familiar plant in Britain, found in parks and gardens. It is native to the Balkan Peninsula, Albania, Bulgaria and Greece. The first reference to the plant appeared in the sixteenth century, in a letter from physician Willem Quackelbeen to physician and naturalist Pietro Andrea Mattioli. Quackelbeen explains that the common name for the tree derives from the practice of horses being given three or four of the trees’ hard seeds in order to give relief from equine chest ailments.

Aesculus hippocastanum
Artist: Jo Edwards
Coloured pencil
Accepted to the Archive 2003

In the early seventeenth century Lord Wootton, who lived at St Augustine’s Abbey in Canterbury, employed John Tradescant to lay out the formal gardens. In 1621 he sent Tradescant on an expedition to Algeria as a ‘gentleman volunteer’. The official purpose of the expedition was an offensive against the Barbary pirates, who were causing havoc in the Mediterranean. The intention of sending Tradescant was for him to bring back new plants and indeed he returned with a number of plants, including the seeds of the horse chestnut which he ‘obtained’ from the cargo of the Barbary pirates. By 1633 a horse chestnut was recorded growing in Tradescant’s London garden. A horse chestnut was also recorded growing in the Oxford Physic Garden in 1648, but it had disappeared from records by 1658.

In 1790, a horse chestnut was found growing in the Pindus mountain range in Greece. It was discovered by John Hawkins, a wealthy landowner from Cornwall, who was interested in travelling. Hawkins’ claim to have found a horse chestnut was not taken seriously as at that time it was believed to be native to regions much further east. However, many years later in 1879 Theodor von Heldreich, Director of the Botanical Gardens in Athens, confirmed Hawkins’ discovery. Visits to the region had been difficult for many years due to various uprisings, but when Heldreich arrived in the area described by Hawkins he saw, to his surprise, a group of horse chestnut trees covered with half-ripe fruit, on the rocky outcrops of a ravine.

The horse chestnut tree is considered to be a short-lived ornamental species, which starts to decline after about 150 years. The wood is regarded as weak but can be used for items such as handles, boxes, fruit racks and kitchen utensils.

Horse chestnuts can be found in parks and private gardens and also by roadsides and in hedgerows. The leaves are palmate and opposite with five to seven leaflets. They appear in the spring emerging from large, shiny, sticky buds. The flowers are white and bell-shaped, held in upright panicles known as candles. They are a rich source of nectar and pollen and are pollinated by both insects and the wind. In autumn, after the leaf has fallen, a leaf scar can be seen in the shape of a horseshoe with nail holes. The fruits are green and spiky and contain one or two seeds; these are known as conkers and used for a popular children’s playground game.

Arbutus unedo L.

Family: Ericaceae

Arbutus unedo was described by Carl Linnaeus in 1753 in Species Plantarum. The specific epithet unedo is attributed to Pliny the Elder, who is reputed to have said after eating the fruit, ‘unum tantum edo’, which translates as ‘I eat only one’. This statement is thought to refer to the bitterness of the fruit. A. unedo is commonly known as the strawberry tree, taking its name from its strawberry-like red fruits. It is in the family Ericaceae, commonly known as the heath or heather family.

Arbutus unedo
Artist: Barbara Munro
Graphite pencil and watercolour
Accepted to the Archive 2015

A. unedo was discovered growing wild in Killarney, south-west Ireland and around the Mediterranean. In its native habitat it grows at the edge of woodland and on rocky hillsides and can be found as a small evergreen tree or shrub. As a tree A. unedo can grow from four to ten metres high, with red to silver-grey smooth bark which is quite distinctive. The bark peels away in long strips to show an attractive copper-red colour underneath. The short-stalked alternate leaves are leathery and simple. They are dark green and glossy on the surface and usually have serrated edges. When the leaves first emerge, they have an attractive red margin.

The flowers appear in late autumn to early winter, with five sepals and five petals. The petals are normally white, although occasionally they can have a pink tinge. They are joined at the base to form a small bell-shaped corolla with a narrow opening. The flowers hang in pendulous clusters or panicles made up of ten to thirty individuals. Pollination is by insects, including honeybees and bumblebees which forage for pollen and nectar. The flowers can be self-fertile and the attractive fleshy spherical fruits ripen in the following autumn. They hang in groups and change colour from green through yellow to red as they mature. The outer skin of the fruit is warty with small protuberances. Birds eat the fruits and disperse the seeds.

A. unedo is grown as an ornamental tree and has a faint but pleasant smell. Some young trees are particularly susceptible to frost and cold dry winds. If the frost is severe, they can die back to ground level, but they quickly regenerate from the roots. A. unedo is often grown in urban areas because of its tolerance of atmospheric pollution. It is a useful tree for planting by the sea as it can act as a wind barrier and is salt-tolerant. In some Mediterranean areas A. unedo has been used for reforestation after fire as its large root system helps to stabilize the soil.

Pollen dating from Irish bogs suggests that the seeds of the strawberry tree arrived in Ireland over 4,000 years ago, around the same time as the migration of the Beaker people to Ireland from Iberia. The wood from A. unedo can be used for burning as firewood and to make charcoal. In Irish mythology it is thought to have protective powers against flooding.

Banksia marginata Cav.
Protea subvestita N.E. Brown

Family: Proteaceae

The Proteaceae family is large and diverse. It is represented in the Florilegium Archive by Banksia marginata, found in south-east Australia, and Protea subvestita, found in South Africa.

Banksia marginata
Artist: Barbara Munro
Watercolour and graphite
Accepted to the Archive 2019

Protea subvestita
Artist: Arnolda Beynon
Graphite pencil and watercolour
Accepted to the Archive 2004

The Banksias were named after Sir Joseph Banks by Carl Linnaeus in 1782. The epithet marginata refers to the slightly curved margins on the underside of the leaves. B. marginata was first described by Antonio José Cavanilles in 1800; he was a Spanish taxonomic botanist who was the Director o...