A Trip to Paris in July and August 1792 | Page 9

a little dog in the same den, as his companion, and a zebra.
The collection of orange trees cannot be matched in any country where these trees do not grow naturally; the number is about six hundred, the largest trunk is about fifteen inches in diameter, and the age of the most ancient of these trees exceeds three centuries.
The Jardin Potager, or kitchen garden, is of fifty acres, divided into about five or six and twenty small gardens, of one, two, or three acres, walled round, both for shelter to the plants, and for training fruit trees against. One of these gardens, of two acres, was entirely allotted to the culture of melons, and these were all of the warty rock cantalupe kind, and were growing under hand-glasses, in the manner of our late cucumbers for pickling.
The season had been so unfavourable for wall-fruit, that (as the gardener told me) all these gardens had yielded less than a dozen peaches and nectarines.
The fruit was sent regularly to the Royal Family in Paris.
There is a botanical garden at the Petit Trianon in the park of Versailles, but the person who shews it was out of the way, so that I did not see it.
I passed several mornings in the Botanical National Garden, (ci-devant Jardin du Roi.) That part of the garden which contains the botanical collection is separated from the other part, which is open to the public at large, by iron palisades. The names of the plants are painted on square plates of tin, stuck in the ground on the side of each plant. I saw a Strelitzia, which was there called Ravenala, (probably from some modern botanist's name) Mr. Thouin, who superintends this garden, said to me, "We will not have any aristocratic plants, neither will we call the new Planet by any other name than that of its discoverer, Herschel." I neglected to ask him why the plant might not retain its original and proper name of Heliconia Bihai?
[Illustration: ANASTATICA or ROSE of JERICHO]
I here found the Anastatica Hierochuntica or Rose of Jericho, which I sought for in vain for several years, and advertised for in the Gentleman's Magazine, for January 1791, and in the newspapers. Many descriptions and figures of this plant are to be found in old books, and the dried plants are frequently to be met with. Old Gerard very justly says, "The coiner spoiled the name in the mint, for of all plants that have been written of, there is not any more unlike unto the rose." The annexed figure represents a single plant; it had been transplanted into a deep pot, which had been filled with earth, so as to make it appear like two plants. The stalks are shrubby, the leaves are fleshy, and of a glaucous or sea-green colour. The corolla consists of four very small white petals. Its scientific description may be found in Linn?us[12]. One of the silicles is drawn magnified.
[Note 12: Genera plantarum, 798.]
Mr. Thouin pointed out to me a new and very beautiful species of Zinnia, of which the flower is twice the size of that of the common sort, and of a deep purple colour: a new verbascum, from the Levant; it was about four feet high, the leaves were almost as woolly as those of the Stachys lanata, and terminated in a point like a spur; it had not yet flowered. And a new solanum, with spines the colour of gold.
He recommended the flower of the spilanthus brasiliana, which our nurserymen call Verbesina acmella as an excellent dentifrice.
I also found here the amethystea, coerulea: this annual has been lost in England above twenty years.[13]
[Note 13: The seeds which are sold in the London shops, for those of this plant, are those of the hyssopus bracteatis.]
The datura fastuosa, the French call Trompette du jugement à trois fleurs l'une dans l'autre; I have myself raised these with triple flowers, both purple and white, though some of our nurserymen pretended the flowers were never more than double. The anthemis arabica, a very singular and pretty annual. A zinnia hybrida, which last has not yet been cultivated in England. Twenty-two sorts of medicago polymorpha, (snails and hedgehogs) of these I had seen only four in England.
Here was a small single moss-rose plant, in a pot, which is the only one I ever saw in France. The air is too hot for those roses, and for the same reason none of the American plants, such as the magnolia (tulip tree) kalmia, &c. thrive in France, though kept in pots in the shade and well watered; the heat of the atmosphere dries the trunk of these trees. But there are many other plants, to the growth of which the climate is much more favourable than it is in England. In the open