Plants in the Hortus
Many of the plants described here were listed in the catalogues of plants published by Sir William Macarthur in 1843, 1845, 1850 and 1857 and in an unpublished catalogue dated 1861. A large number of additional plants were identified from correspondence, gardening notebooks and other documents surviving in the archives. The Hortus attempts to describe all the plants grown in the gardens at Camden Park and those grown in horticultural enterprises such as orchards and vineyards and includes plants grown outside the gardens in the park-like environs of the Camden Park estate. The Hortus plants served a wide range of purposes in the 19th century household; as ornament, living fences, fibre, dyestuffs, medicines, food and drink from the garden, orchard and vineyard and many others.
Escallonia montevidensis DC.
Evergreen shrub or small tree, often confused with the closely allied E. floribunda H.B.&K. The leaves are narrowly oval and finely toothed, the flowers white in flattened panicles. [RHSD, Hortus].
Escallonia rubra (Ruiz. & Pav.) Pers.
Fully hardy, vigorous, variable, evergreen shrub with peeling bark, toothed, glossy green leaves and loose panicles, to 10cm long, of tubular, dark crimson to pink flowers, 1cm long, in summer and autumn. To 5m by 5m. It makes useful screens and windbreaks and in milder regions can be clipped as hedging for more formal situations. [RHSE, Hortus, Hilliers’]. There are now many garden cultivars of Escallonia available, many of them hybrids. [Hilliers’].
Eschscholzia californica Cham.
Fully hardy, variable mat-forming annual with numerous single orange, red, yellow or white flowers from late winter to summer. In mild climates it will flower freely from mid-winter. Self seeds very readily. To 30cm. A spectacular plant when planted in drifts. [RHSE, Hortus].
Eschscholzia californica Cham. var. crocea (Benth.) Jeps.
See Eschscholzia californica Cham. for a brief description of the species. Crocea has deep orange flowers, more freely produced than the type. [RHSD, Hortus].
Euclinia longiflora Salisb.
Frost-tender shrub or small tree, sometimes scrambling, with oblong leaves, to 30cm, and solitary, terminal, white to cream or pale yellow, funnel-shaped flowers, tinged red at the tips. To 6m. [RHSD].
Eucomis comosa Hort. ex Wehrh.
A possible candidate for Macarthur’s ‘Eucomis umbellatis’ is Eucomis comosa, a bulbous perennial with strap-shaped leaves with wavy margins, heavily spotted with purple beneath, and racemes of pale greenish-white flowers with distinct purple centres, in late summer and autumn. The tallest species, and the commonest grown today. To 100cm. [RHSE, Hortus, CECB].
Eugenia jambos L.
Tree with lance-shaped leaves and terminal clusters of white flowers followed by ovoid, yellowish-white, fragrant fruit, used in confectionary. To 10m. [RHSD, Hortus].
Eugenia uniflora L.
Frost-tender shrub or small tree with ovate-lance-shaped leaves, to 10cm, and solitary, fragrant white flowers, usually at the base of young shoots, followed by edible red to black fruits, 3cm across. To 7m. [RHSD, Hortus].
Euonymus europaeus L.
Fully hardy, broadly conical, deciduous shrub or small tree, with spreading, somewhat pendant shoots, scalloped dark green leaves, to 7cm long, which turn red in autumn, and 4-lobed, clustered red fruit. To 3m. [RHSE, Hortus, Hilliers’].
Euonymus japonicus Thunb.
Frost hardy, dense, bushy, evergreen shrub or small tree with toothed, obovate leaves, to 6cm long, and small white flowers followed by spherical, pink-tinged white fruits, which are not always produced. To 4m. [RHSE, Hortus, Hilliers’].
Euonymus japonicus Thunb. var. variegatus
For more detail see Euonymus japonicus Thunb. ‘There are two varieties, one with silver striped, the other with gold striped leaves; but the latter is very subject to run back to the green-leaved, while the silver striped hardly ever changes.’ [BR f.6/1844]. Macarthur’s plant is presumably one of these.
Eupatorium sordidum Less.
Half hardy, bushy, rounded shrub with young stems covered in red woolly hairs, opposite, ovate, toothed leaves with red hairs beneath, and terminal corymbs, to 12cm across, of fragrant, violet flowers, mainly in winter. To 3m. [RHSE, Hortus].
Euphorbia fulgens Karw. ex Klotzsch
Frost tender, erect, open, deciduous shrub with slender stems that arch at the tips, lance-shaped leaves, to 10cm long, and decorative axillary cymes of flower-like scarlet bracts and reduced floral parts in winter. To 1.2m. [RHSE, Hortus].
Euphorbia heterophylla L. var. cyathophora (Murr.) Boiss.
The species Euphorbia heterophylla is an annual with ovate, sometimes variegated leaves and small flowers surrounded with scarlet bracts. To 90cm. [RHSD, Hortus]. The variety cyathophora, described nearly 100 years before the type, varies from the type ‘not only in its mostly pandurate [fiddle-shaped] leaves (the floral ones commonly purplish- or reddish-splotched) but in its more rounded, ecarinate [keelless] seeds’. [Annals of the Missouri Botanic Garden vol.25 p.72/1938].
Euphorbia milii Des Moul cv. splendens (Bojer ex Hook.) Ursch & Leandri.
Frost tender, semi-prostrate to scrambling, slow-growing, mainly evergreen, semi-succulent shrub with slender, fleshy, thorny stems and branches and axillary cymes of intense red flower-like bracts and reduced floral parts in spring and summer. To 30cm, spreading to several metres. The type Euphorbia milii is a bushy shrub, to 1m or more. [RHSE, Hortus].
