Curtis's Botanical Magazine

Thank you so much.

In 1839, a rather stuffy British publication called Curtis's Botanical Magazine, the oldest continuously published botanical periodical in the world, incidentally, founded by a man called none other than William Curtis back in 1787.

They ran a short notice about a plant that had just arrived from South America, and the writer opens by more or less apologizing for the thing, admitting it has, quote, neither beautiful forms nor gaudy colors, quote, to recommend it.

And that is a piece of botanical spectacle.

And it's one that really runs right through to the end of our story today.

Because the grain that's nutritionally superior to almost anything the Spanish brought with them gets treated for centuries as the lesser shameful food purely because of who ate it, not what it was.

Now, that 1839 quote we opened with from Curtis's Botanical Magazine, that suggests Quinoa hadn't completely vanished from the European awareness during this period.

No, not completely at least.

And that will be on our website where we put all the links.

So if you go to notjustagarden.co.uk, some of the links that I've put in for Carlos' episode, there's the Curtis Botanical Magazine that he mentions.

Mm-hmm.

There's also botanical artist Lucy Smith is on there.

So then the time passed by, and then we have this, uh...

It's interesting how, uh, this is the second time it happens to me, a botanical magazine can save a species.

There is the Curtis botanical magazine, which is the longest standing botanical magazine in the world, which is done by Kew Gardens.

And then they have this format, which is half A4, more or less- And then, uh, most of the plants that they are there, they are painted to life size.

Mr. C. Ford, the director of the Botanic Garden at Hong Kong, has identified the plant as Alpinia galanga, the source of the greater or Java galangal root of commerce.

Mr. Watson of Kew appears to have been the first to suggest that the Chinese ginger plant is probably a species of Alpinia, and possibly identical with the Siam ginger plant, which was described by Sir J. Hooker in the Botanical Magazine, Tab 6946, in 1887, as a new species under the name of Alpinia zingiberia.

Mr. J. G. Baker, in working up the Cytemeniae for the Flora of British India, arrived at the conclusion that it is not distinct from the Alpinia galanga, wild.

The Siam and Chinese gingers are therefore identical, and both are the produce of Alpinia galanga, wild.