The Hamlyn Guide to House Plants [antikvár]

INTRODUCTION House plants are becoming a part of everyone's life, whatever their feelings towards gardening and the great outdoors, brightening homes, offices and factories. Somé plants are expensive to buy and others very cheap, but once acquired they all demand somé attention if they are to stay in peak condition and not disappoint their owners. This book is intended as a practical guide to the identification, selection and cultivation of a wide rangé of house plants, somé of which are common, and a few of which are rather unusual. The book is in no way a botanical study, though I have made every effort to bring nomenclature up to date, as well as including the older botanical synonyms by which somé gardeners may still know their plants. Common names are noted too, and the index should enable anyone who knows a plánt by the name of Busy Lizzie or Mind-your-own-business to locate it with ease. Common names vary from place to place and country to country, so the plants are arranged under their botanical names, which are international. I have adopted Stebbins' arrangement of plánt families. The ferns are placed before the flowering plants; the latter are divided into dicotyledons and monocotyledons. This arrangement will help the student without intefering too much with the book from the layman's point of view. Wherever possible the origin of the plant's generic name has been explained. I have located these in various places but I have found A. W. Smith's and W. T. Stearn's A Gardener's Dictionary of Plánt Names (Cassell) an invaluable help. I freely acknowledge that much of the information given was culled from its pages. I have grown the majority of the plants described in this book myself and so the details of cultivation come from my own experi-ence. One or two are just acquaintances but I see no reason for leaving them out. In such cases I have relied upon the information of friends and colleagues whose judgement can be trusted. The first part of the book deals with the routine care and attention that plants need, and it is to this section that the reader should refer for precise details on potting, watering, feeding, propagation and pests and diseases. The bulk of the book deals with the individual plants, describing them and noting their cultivation requirements. Every gardener must learn from his own experiences, but I hope this book will take somé of the guesswork out of growing a remark-ably varied and rewarding group of plants. a.titchmarsh Sunningdale 1981