Content area
Full Text
Fathers of Botany: The Discovery of Chinese Plants by European Missionaries. By Jane Kilpatrick. (Kew Publishing, Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew. Distrib. University of Chicago Press. 2015. Pp. x, 254. $60.00. ISBN 978-0-226-20670-7.)
Every Western garden derives at least some-and perhaps most-of its plants from the extraordinary natural diversity of China. Their very names remind us of this-innumerable sinensis or chinensis epithets, and plenty of geographical locations, have been rendered into Latinate orthography: yunnanensis, szechuanica, hongkongensis. But gardeners also are aware of the plethora of Chinese plants known by epithets commemorating Westerners: henryi, wilsonii, forrestii, davidii, delavayi, fargesii, souliei, and many others. All played some part, great or small, in revealing the riches of the Chinese flora to Western science and horticulture.
To an Anglophone gardener the stories of the first three-Augustine Henry, Ernest Wilson, and George Forrest-are well known. The narratives of their travels in China, easily available in English, have...