The Heathery: A Monograph of the Genus Erica (Complete‪)‬

This beautiful and extended tribe of plants, at present so much admired and cultivated in our British Gardens, is but of recent introduction, at least the major part of them, as antecedent to the year 1772 the few species then known were the E. vulgaris, E. Tetralix, E. cinerea, and E. vagans, natives; the E. Dabœcii, from Ireland; the E. arborea from Madeira in 1748; the E. herbacea or carnea in 1763 from Switzerland; the E. mediterranea in 1765 from Minorca; the E. scoparia, E. viridi-purpurea, E. australis, E. ciliaris, and E. umbellata, from Portugal, between the years 1768 and 1707. The two other European species we possess, the E. stricta, and E. multiflora, natives of Spain, have been but 14 years in cultivation with us; and the African species found within the district of the Cape of Good Hope and the adjacent territory, which have swelled the Genus to so great an extent, and by the extreme brilliance of their flowers have contributed so much to the present splendour of our green-houses, were unknown to our English botanists, but by name, till the above æra. In the year 1772 seeds of two species were sent from the Cape.—Both vegetated. The first was the E. tubiflora of the Sp. Plant. of Linnæus, the other the E. concinna. In 1774 the superb collection at Kew was enriched by nearly 20 species sent by Mr. F. Masson, His Majesty’s collector at the Cape, for which we refer to the 2nd vol. of the Catalogue of that garden. From this period, till within these few years, the accession has been so rapid, so many different collectors producing new species, that it would be only a list of names to enumerate them, and no way illustrate the present subject; nor would it be any way relevant to the subject, to know how many were enumerated by Petiver, Plukenet, Hermann, Oldenland, Ray, &c. &c. as, before Linnæus had by his mode of classification determined the precise limits of the Genus, the confusion that then pervaded all the elder botanists is such, that any comment from them would rather perplex than elucidate. Therefore, beginning with the Systema Naturæ of Linnæus, vol. ii. of 1767, including the European species, he there enumerates but 42; and Dahlgren, in 1770, edited a dissertation (under his inspection) on the Genus, containing a catalogue of 58 names from Bergius, the Mantissa, &c. Thunberg, on his return from Africa, added 13 to the number, all of which were inserted in the Supplementum Plantarum of 1781. From this and some other sources Murray has in his Syst. Veg. of 1784 made a list of 74 names, and Martyn in his edition of Miller’s Dictionary, 1795, enumerates but 84. Willdenow, collating from all the foregoing, &c., has mounted the list to 137 in his Species Plantarum. This is certainly far short of the number at present cultivated in Britain; and from the variety of beautiful new specimens and seeds lately received by G. Hibbert, Esq. from his collector at the Cape, many of which have vegetated and are in high perfection at the Clapham Gardens, we may fairly conjecture that the Genus is by no means bounded by the species we at present possess.