Loudon, the English horticultural authority, says in his Encyclopædia of Gardening (1835) that “some of the finest flowers of British gardens are natives of South America, especially annuals.” He mentions the dahlia—by the obsolete name of Georgina; the Marvel of Peru (Mirabilia) the Calceolaria and the Schizanthus, adding that “beautiful shrubs are not less numerous, but they are generally inmates of greenhouses.”

Since Loudon wrote Brazil, as other parts of South and Central America, has been the happy hunting ground of plant explorers, and the gardens of Europe and North America have been beautified to an extent of which that devoted horticulturist never dreamed. The tale of the indebtedness of the gardens of less fortunate climes to South America in general and Brazil in particular for plants and shrubs, both ornamental and of economic value, would occupy a large volume; the extent of the debt is no less great than general ignorance of it. Practically nothing is known of early attempts to introduce Brazilian plants, for they were failures, and failures they remained for two and a half centuries after South America was discovered. The science of botany and art of gardening were alike in primitive stages until the latter part of the eighteenth century, and, whilst South American plants were known by their local names, means for their successful transportation had not been found; nor, in the rare cases of their surviving long journeys by sailing boat, was successful cultivation of these exotics known. If, as is possible, there are yet in herbariums in Portugal any plants which the early colonists sent home, no printed record of them seems to exist.

It was not until the second decade of the nineteenth century that any serious attempts were made to reveal to the world the richness of Brazilian flora, and only within recent years that anything like a comprehensive account of it has been published: as far back as 1648 Willem Piso and Georg Marcgrav published in Amsterdam a large folio volume containing spirited woodcuts carefully coloured by hand of Brazilian flowers, shrubs, fishes, birds, reptiles, etc., but this was a natural history rather than a botanical book. Both these pioneers are commemorated in Pisonia and Marcgravia, species of which are still in cultivation.

In 1820 three scientific works dealing with Brazilian flora appeared. Mikan’s Delectus floræ ... brasiliensis was issued in Vienna: Raddi’s Di alcune specie nuove del Brasile and his Quarante piante nuove de Brasile, were issued in quarto volumes in Modena. Four years later St. Hilaire published in Paris his Histoire des Plantes of Brazil and Paraguay; between 1827 and 1831 J. E. Pohl’s Plantarum Brasilæ icones appeared in two folio volumes in Vienna. Other floras of Brazil, notably that of Martius, 1837–40, came out at intervals, and by the end of the century the plant life of Brazil was well covered by scientific publications.

So far as Great Britain is concerned, and it may be taken as a criterion of Europe generally, the most comprehensive record of sources and dates of the introduction of South American plants is Loudon’s Hortus Britannicus, first published in 1830. It enumerates something like thirty thousand species, exotic and otherwise. As the importation of South American plants was only in its infancy at that time many hundreds of flowers, now familiar in gardens and hothouses, are not recorded, but the book is reasonably complete up to the time of publication. Most of the more important introduced aliens, before and after the date of Loudon’s great work, may be found described and illustrated in the Botanical Magazine of London (issued monthly from 1787 to the present time), while others are dealt with in Loddiges’ Botanical Cabinet, 1818–24, and in many other of the quantity of horticultural publications appearing in Europe during the first half of the nineteenth century—notably in Nicholson’s Dictionary of Gardening and in the revised edition of Johnson’s Gardener’s Dictionary, bringing the record to the end of the nineteenth century.

Whilst many European botanists, such as Langsdorff, Burchell, Lhotsky and others had, during the earlier decades of the nineteenth century, explored certain parts of Brazil, nothing was of more importance to general knowledge of the plant-treasures of the country than the work accomplished by a Scotch botanist, Dr. George Gardner, afterwards Superintendent of the Botanical Gardens of Ceylon. His Travels in the Interior of Brazil during 1836–41 is a record of high merit, not only on account of its contribution to Brazilian botany and natural history, but because it is a faithful and genial picture of life and conditions in the interior of Brazil three-quarters of a century ago. The amazing richness and beauty of Brazilian flora had never before been revealed to Europeans as through Gardner’s book and his collections of thousands of specimens; it is extraordinary that these fascinating Travels should have remained out of print.

Of all the groups of plants introduced to the rest of the world from the southerly countries of the New World, orchids easily rank first, as the most precious, the most varied and beautiful, and the most costly: the first brought to England came from the East and West Indies. Epidendrum cochleatum found its way from Jamaica to England and was flowered for the first time in 1787; another species of the same lovely family, Epidendrum fragrans, came also from Jamaica in 1778 but was not flowered until 1788. In 1794 fifteen species of epiphytal orchids were at Kew, chiefly brought from the West Indies by Admiral Bligh, and for many years these islands, and India, were the main sources of orchid importation. But in 1793 a species of Oncidium was introduced to England from Panama: in 1811 another came from Montevideo, and by 1818 Brazil had begun to contribute species of the same genus. In 1825 Loddiges of Hackney, London, had in cultivation some eighty-four species of orchids from South America and the East, and by 1830 the Royal Horticultural Society of London had collectors in various parts of Brazil, hunting for rare plants.

Many beautiful orchids were sent home by business men residing in South America; for instance, William Cattley of Barnet, who died in 1832, and whose name is commemorated by the noble Cattleya, established an extensive correspondence with business men living abroad for the purposes of obtaining new and rare orchids, and through his efforts came many fine specimens, chiefly from Brazil. The earliest Brazilian Cattleya to reach Europe was C. Loddigesii, 1815, but the most famous and most protean species of all C. Cabiata, reached Europe in 1818, and others of the same genus came in rapid succession from Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Costa Rica, Guatemala and the Argentine. Many beautiful Brazilian orchids were sent by William Harrison, a merchant living in Rio de Janeiro during the thirties and forties of last century, to his brother Richard in Liverpool, whose residence at Aigburth was in those days a Mecca to which orchid lovers paid annual pilgrimages.

To introduce these plants was one thing; to cultivate them successfully was quite another. Hooker once declared that for more than half a century England was “the grave of tropical orchids” and that those surviving did so in spite of, rather than on account of, the treatment they received. Each grower had his special system, mostly wrong: it was not until after repeated and costly failures that orchid importing and growing became a success, and that success only became general about 1850.

The debt of other countries to Brazil and indeed all tropical America for ferns and cacti is also great. The Canna and its ally Marcanta may be traced in England as far back as 1730; the Begonias and the Gesnera date from 1816–18, whilst the favourite Abutilon, introduced in 1837, is today hardy in many parts of Europe. The Gloxinia, arriving from South America a century earlier, has developed possibilities undreamt-of by earlier horticulturists, and the same may be said of the Fuchsia, brought from Mexico and Chile, 1823–25. The most popular South American shrub is the Escallonia macrantha, introduced from the island of Chiloe (Alexander Selkirk’s retreat) in 1848; it has for many years been a favourite hedge plant in the county of Cornwall, where it thrives in pink profusion.

The Calceolaria is another early nineteenth century alien from South America; so too is the Dahlia: sixty years ago whole nurseries were given over to the culture and hybridization of this flower, and an entire literature appeared on the subject. Its popularity has somewhat waned, but on the other hand the most gorgeous of greenhouse climbers, Bignonia, was never more treasured than it is today. Brazil, and other adjacent countries, has given us also many species of such genera as Achimenes, Alstromeria, Anthurium, Aristolochia, Caladium, Calathea, Hibiscus, Iponoea (the Evening Primrose), and hundreds of other beautiful plants.

Among plants introduced and cultivated abroad for other reasons than their loveliness are the pineapple (Anana sativa) which reached Europe as early as 1690; coconuts were carried from Brazil a century ago; and the Brazil nut (Bertholletia excelsa), which was probably first taken to Portugal by very early navigators, finds its first mention in England in the 1830 edition of Lindley’s Natural System of Botany; he speaks of the “Souari ... or Brazil nuts of the shop, the kernel of which is one of the most delicious fruits of the nut kind.”

Brazil’s gifts to the pharmacopeias of the world have also been very valuable. Discovery, or rather publication in Europe of the medicinal properties of many Brazilian plants is due to Piso, author with Marcgrav (“een geboren Duitscher”) of the work De Medicina Brasiliensi, etc., of 1648, already mentioned. This monumental publication was undertaken under the patronage of Count John Maurice of Nassau, Governor of North Brazil during the period of Dutch occupation, a far-seeing man whose portraits are to be seen in the public galleries of Amsterdam and Brussels. Nearly all the Brazilian plants with notable medicinal properties are fully described and illustrated in this book: among them, and perhaps the best known, is Ipecacuanha, obtained from the root of Cephalis ipecacuanha, native to the damp shady forests of Brazil. This drug was first mentioned in an account of Brazil given by a Portuguese friar in Purchas’s Pilgrimes, 1625, where it is called Ipecaya, so that it is clear that Piso, although the first to bring the drug to the notice of European medical men, was not the discoverer of its qualities. In England the famous physician John Pechey was the first savant to bring ipecacuanha to general notice in his Observations made upon the Brasilian root called Ipepocoanha, issued in 1682; a few years later it was firmly established in European medicine. In 1686, says A. C. Wootton (Chronicles of Pharmacy, 1910) Louis XIV bought from Jean Adrien Helvetius the secret of a medicine with which a number of remarkable cures had been performed; Helvetius, whose patronymic was Schweitzer, was the son of a Dutch quack, and he not only made his own fortune out of ipecacuanha (the royal gift alone was a thousand louis d’or) but got the appointment of Inspector General of the hospitals of Flanders and court physician to the Duke of Orleans.

Another famous drug from Brazil is the Balsam of Capevi (or Copaiba—Copaiva), the sap of Copaifera officinalis, a genus of the leguminous order of plants; it was described by Piso; is mentioned in Edward Cooke’s Voyage to the South Sea and round the World, published in 1712, and first made its appearance in English gardens in 1774, having previously figured in Jacquin’s Stirpium Americanarum Historia, 1763.

Jaborandi, obtained from the dried leaflets of Pilocarpus pennatifolius, was described by Piso and Marcgrav: like the two mentioned above, this drug was well known to the native tribes of Brazil and employed by the pagés or medicine men; it received its first serious notice in recent times in the Diccionario de Medicina published by Dr. T. J. H. Langgard in Rio de Janeiro in 1865. The plant reached English gardens three years later, but its properties do not seem to have been recognized in Europe until 1874, when a Brazilian scientist, Dr. Coutinho, sent some leaves to M. Rabutau, the eminent pharmacist of Paris, who tested it and declared it to be as valuable as quinine as a febrifuge and sudorific.

Guaraná (Paullinia sorbilis, Mart.) is a tonic widely used in Brazil and Peru, which has recently been making its way into favour in Europe, France taking the drug readily. It is obtained from seeds, and a paste made which hardens into such a consistency that it can only be powdered by a grater; this powder is dissolved in cold water and taken as a tonic and digestive. One of Brazil’s bottled mineral waters is also made with Guaraná added, and the pink-tinted, rather acrid drink is quite agreeable.

The Brazilian interior, and particularly Amazonas, is so rich in medicinal herbs, seeds and roots, that it would take pages to give their names, and as they are not popularly known, the reader would not be greatly enlightened, but the Quassia (Quassia amara, Linn.) has international fame; Jalap (Piptostegia Pisonis) is an old acquaintance. Many drugs have local names as the Lagryma da Nossa Senhora (Tear of Our Lady), a diuretic; the Melão de São Caetano (S. Caetano’s Melon), whose little fruit of the cucumber class is a medicine, whose stalks furnish a fine fibre, and whose leaves contain potash. There is at least one remarkable astringent, the Cipó Caboclo (Davallia rugosa); Cambará is a much-used base for pectoral syrups; the Batata de Purga and the Purga do Pastor are used all over Brazil; many of the Rubiaceae are used as febrifuges; there are numbers of tonics, as the Laranjeira do Matto (Forest Orange) and the Páo Parahyba and Páo Pereira. Andiroba oil is used to make a skin soap, and also to light the family lamp in northerly states; the Sapucainha (Carpotroche brasiliensis) tree yields a nut containing fifty per cent of oil used locally for rheumatism in Minas, Rio and Espirito Santo; and the Pinhão de Purga’s seeds furnish an oil said to be convertible into gas.

Besides the well-known Vanilla, there is known one fine flavouring and scenting plant, the Páo precioso, one of the Lauraceae; its bark and seeds are sweetly perfumed and it is much used by local chemists.

Brazil could if necessary ship excellent mineral waters abroad. There is an import of bottled waters into Brazil, but they have rivals in the national waters, chiefly found in Minas Geraes and there bottled by Brazilian companies. Perhaps the most popular are Caxambú and Salutaris, but there are others. The chief points of origin are at Aguas Virtuosas, Caxambú, Lambary, Cambuquira, São Lourenço, and the recently opened wells at Araxá.

Altogether the natural gifts of Brazil in minerals and plants are such that not only does she supply the basis for many home-made remedies but also ships drugs abroad; were her resources better investigated and quantities developed she could greatly increase her position as a supplier of medicines to international markets.