TOWARDS AN HISTORICAL INVENTORY OF IRISH CULTIVARS

E. Charles Nelson
Irish horticulturists and amateur gardeners have produced a remarkable number of important and valuable ornamental garden plants - cultivars of Rosa, Narcissus and Escallonia, for example, retain prominent positions in the trade, and other genera are also well represented.

In an attempt to catalogue and document Ireland's cultivars, an inventory is in preparation. This will include brief descriptions of each cultivar, a summary of its history with particular attention paid to the origin of the separate cultivars, and references to published illustrations and reports.

In preparing the basic index, many different sources have been scanned. Unpublished manuscripts have provided some valuable information on cultivar origins - for example, on the date of discovery of the Irish yew (Taxus baccata 'Fastigiata'). However, horticultural manuscripts generally are rare and uninformative. Publications, including nursery catalogues, contain much more information, but it is not always reliable. Periodicals, especially those published between 1880 and 1940, yield good historical material. Books, often written at second-hand, are not important and are too frequently inaccurate. Irish nurseries have published catalogues since about 1780, but only, in the late 1800s do new cultivars of local origin make an appearance in them. But the major problem with catalogues is the fact that very few have been preserved - there is no archive of Irish horticulture.

It is important for nomenclatural stability, as well as for historical research in the future, that collections of nursery catalogues should be established and maintained, and that national archives of horticulture should be formed.

Charles Nelson, E. (1986). TOWARDS AN HISTORICAL INVENTORY OF IRISH CULTIVARS. Acta Hortic. 182, 301-308
DOI: 10.17660/ActaHortic.1986.182.37
https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.1986.182.37
182_37
301-308

Acta Horticulturae