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Floral Illustrations of the Seasons / Consisting of the Most Beautiful, Hardy and Rare Herbaceous Plants, Cultivated in the Flower Garden cover

Floral Illustrations of the Seasons / Consisting of the Most Beautiful, Hardy and Rare Herbaceous Plants, Cultivated in the Flower Garden

Chapter 30: WINTER.
By Margaret Roscoe
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About This Book

A series of hand-drawn and engraved botanical plates paired with succinct Latin classifications and practical cultivation notes, arranged to follow the seasons. Each entry describes plant form, varieties, propagation and soil or exposure preferences, and suggests garden uses for hardy herbaceous ornamentals. The preface frames the volume as an accessible guide intended to encourage aesthetic appreciation and botanical study, particularly among women, by combining accurate description with visual representation.

Plate 40. Aster Amellus.
Drawn from Nature by M.R. Engraved by R. Havell Junr.

ASTER amellus.

Italian aster.

Class and Order.—Syngenesia Polygamia Superflua.

Syn. Aster Amellus. Hortus Kewensis, vol. 5, page 54.

Root fibrous—stem erect, branched, sometimes two feet high—leaves sessile, alternate, ovate lanceolate, obtuse—margins undulate. Flowers purple, corymbose, on short peduncles; calyx imbricated—radiated florets, linear, obtuse, furnished with a style only—florets of the disk fertile containing both stamens and pistils.

Few autumnal plants are more deserving of cultivation than the Aster Amellus—the beauty of the flower, its moderately low growth, and late flowering, rendering it a valuable plant for the season, and perhaps preferable to any of the genus—it is a native of the South of Europe, and was cultivated in this country, as long since as 1596, by Gerard, it will grow in any soil or situation, and flowers from September until destroyed by severe frost—it may be increased by dividing the roots, which according to Miller should not be moved oftener than every third year.

The genus aster is a very numerous one, and affords some ornamental species

A. alpina. A. nova angliæ.
— blandus. — spectabilis.
— elegans. — pulcherrimus.
— grandiflorus.

Pl. 40.

WINTER.

—— The fairer forms
That cultivation glories in, are His,
He sets the bright procession on its way,
And marshalls all the order of the Year;
He marks the bounds that Winter may not pass,
And blunts his pointed fury: in its case
Russet and rude folds up the tender germ
Uninjured, with inimitable art,
And ere one flowery season fades and dies,
Designs the blooming wonders of the next.
Cowper.