A Saturday night stop at the used-book backroom of the local mall's megabookstore yielded this find. This book is a self-described "cyclopedia" of perennials, annuals and shrubs, published in the 1930's. I'm not well-read enough in garden literature to know much of anything about the author, G. A. Stevens, and for that I apologize. The book's 300+ pages (covering, by my cursory count, well over 300 different plants) is fairly modest in size for its stated ambition, but does a more than acceptable job of surveying the field. True to its title, each entry is accompanied by a photograph that, owing to the photographic and printing limitations of the time, looks not so much as in color as color-ized, if you know what I mean.
The delightful surprise of this book is in the accompanying text. I had expected entries of the "blah-blah-blah" handbook type, and while there's a little bit of that:
"Cannas are grown from rhizomes which are kept under cover over winter";
the book is also studded with succinct, snarky stuff:
On Hydrangea paniculata grandiflora: "...it has been so overplanted that there are far, far too many of them in the world and it would be a fine thing for all gardeners to shun them as a plague";
On Physalis (Chinese lantern plant): "These brightly colored lanterns are cut, dried, and wired for making winter bouquets by those who like that sort of thing";
On Yucca: "Yuccas are easy to have. If you don't believe it, try to kill one";
On Fritillaria imperialis: "a ring of drooping, bell-shaped, orange and yellow flowers surrounded by a tuft of foliage which gives them a perpetual air of astonishment, justified by their genuine amazement at their own awful odor";
On bridal wreath spirea: "A burlesque investigator, studying the habits of the American people, reported that nine of ten have Spirea."
On the flip side, the author also indulges in some fairly florid [Ahem. Sorry.] prose when discussing favorites. I can't read the following without hearing it in the voice of Edward Everett Horton:
On wisteria: "Probably there is not a single person in the world who can look upon a Wisteria vine with its abundant purple blooms without experiencing a tug of longing for something far away and unattainable, for the beauty of the Wisteria is something too ethereal to be expressed in the words of ordinary speech, and its appeal to the imagination is redolent of balconies and moonlit nights. The tortured trunk of the vine seems to express the desperate striving of the Wisteria to pull itself out of the earth and soar away into the ether..."
This book gives an interesting look back at a time when hostas were still known as funkias, and Japanese barberries could still be considered "[o]ne of the finest hedge plants" instead of the overgrown, invasive nuisances they are today. It's also interesting to see that so many of the plants featured in the book are still beloved mainstays of our gardens.
This book is out of print and pre-dates the ISBN system, but I see that numerous used copies are listed at alibris.com at very reasonable prices.
Garden Flowers in Color: A Picture Cyclopedia of Flowers. G. A. Stevens [according to the alibris listing, the "G" is for "Glendon"]. Copyright 1933 (several reprintings through 1939). The Macmillan Company.
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