Henry Phillips (horticulturist)

"The Chinese hold some particular kinds of flowers in great veneration, especially the , which they call Too Chong Fa: its flowers are deemed grateful to the gods; and, accordingly. at the commencement of the ,when the plant is generally in blossom, large branches with flowers are placed in all the temples as an acceptable new year's offering."

"The ancient and silent language of flowers lends its aid to gratitude, friendship, filial love, and maternal fondness. Even affliction may be soothed by the emblematical communication of sentiment. , when imprisoned by the tyrants of the , amused himself by the study of floral language, his daughter being allowed to send him flowers to the prison. Thence a few days before he met his fate on the scaffold, he sent back to this favorite child, two dried , to express both the purity of his heart, and the fate which awaited him."

"Potatoe is the English name of the tuberose-rooted esculent Lycopersicon, or , of botanical writers. It was evidently so called on account of its similarity to the batata, the name of the , which was known in Europe at least thirty-three years before this country was blessed with the potatoe, which now forms alike the rich man's luxury and the poor man's bread!"

"In 's for 1758, p. 116, mention is made of an in , near , the property of the , supposed to be of near one thousand years growth. It was six feet two inches in diameter, contained about ten tons of timber, and was sold for forty pounds."

"Theophrastus, who wrote about 300 years before Christ, mentions the as the only tree in Greece that produced the blossoms before the leaves. ... The almond-tree was not cultivated in Italy in the time of Cato, who calls the fruit, nucces græcæ, or greek nuts."

",who was in the in 1573, was the first European author who made any mention of coffee."