CHINESE-AMERICAN FLOWERS
More modern American garden flowers come from China than from anywhere else -- many more than from Europe, for instance. One question we must answer in designing the Museum's (i.e., CAMOC'S) garden parking lot is whether we want to use only Chinese-American flowers and shrubs or whether we should be more interested in the overall look of the garden than in the origins of the plants growing there.
The pictures shown below are taken from early Chinese books on plants, gardens,and herbal medicine, as reproduced in Hui-Lin Li's fascinating book, The Garden Flowers of China (New York, Ronald Press, 1959). Professor Li was a first-generation Chinese immigrant who taught at the University of Pennsylvania and worked at the Arnold Arboretum in Philadelphia.
Other flowers first domesticated in China include the narcissus, hibiscus, mallow, magnolia, trumpet vine, honeysuckle, fairy primrose, wisteria, snowball viburnum, sweet william, and, of course, the "King of Flowers," the peony. The modern rose, very different from early European roses, is largely Chinese in origin.
