Elizabeth Kent (writer)

"All Europe, and the temperate parts of the vast , abound with . The , which is little regarded in warmer climates, is used for a variety of purposes in the bleak and barren , and in other northern countries. ... In the it affords a dye. en cloth boiled in water, and afterwards in a strong decoction made from the green tops and flowers of this plant, becomes of a beautiful orange-colour. Brettius relates, that a kind of ale brewed from these young tops was much used by the : and it is said to be still an ingredient in the beer in some of the Western Isles. In many parts of Great Britain s are made of this Heath; and it is an excellent fuel. The flowers are either a kind of rose-colour slightly tinged with purple, or they are quite white. Bees collect a great quantity of honey from them."

"The is an evergreen shrub, with fine glossy leaves: the honey-breathing blossoms, as Evelyn terms them, come out in May; they are numerous, but very small, and are very grateful to bees. It is a native of Europe and , and was introduced into this country in 1629."

"is thought to make the best , and its soot is a good lamp-black for printers' ink. The leaves are good fodder for horses, kine, sheep, and goats; and the seeds are the favourite food of the ."

"... queen Elizabeth ... is said to have planted an with her own hand at , in which she was brought up when an infant. It went always by her name, and I remember it a stately flourishing tree, except that the top was decayed. It stood at the upper end of , near where the turnpike now is, and was boundary of the parish on the north side. It was felled, to the great regret of the neighbourhood, on the 11th of November 1745, and sold for a , by lord of the manor."

"The , from the esculent quality of the s, which, in times of scarcity, are frequently eaten by the poor in the south of France, ground, and made into bread: some eat them fresh like nuts; they are sweet, and very different from our s. This Oak was cultivated by in 1739."

"says that the gum-resin, called ', is supposed to be the incense formerly used by the ancients in their religious ceremonies, though not the substance known by that name in shops. It is much employed by the Roman Catholics in their chapels, for similar uses: when burned, it diffuses a very fragrant smell. This olibanum, or true frankincense, has been supposed to be the produce of the , but that plant does not afford any resin. The olibanum now sold in the shops is the produce of the ."

"The is most appropriately named, for, in addition to the pensive drooping appearance of its branches, it is common to see little drops of water, which stand like fallen tears upon the leaves. The willow will grow in any but a dry soil, but most delights and best thrives in the immediate neighbourhood of water."

"Bess Kent is an enigmatic figure. We know she wrote voluminous letters, in which she laid her heart bare, but few have survived. We know that she wrote at least three books — two about flowers and trees and one for children, and that she planned to write another — but we know little about how she conducted her research, or how long these books took her to write. In the late 1810s and early 1820s she attempted to wean herself off , but there is little to indicate when she first developed this addiction. She made at least one suicide attempt and threatened to make others, but the circumstances surrounding them are a matter of conjecture."