Cape heaths in European gardens: the early history of South African Erica species in cultivation, their deliberate hybridization and the orthographic bedlam

This paper discusses the horticultural history of southern African Erica spp. in Europe, and especially in Britain, dur­ ing the late eighteenth and the early decades of the nineteenth century . We note evidence for the deliberate hybridization of the so-called Cape heaths by European horticulturists, in particular by the English nursery man William Rollisson and by the Very Rev. William Herbert. We discuss some of the nomenclatural consequences of the naming by miscellaneous botanists and nurserymen of the hundreds of new Erica species and hybrids, emphasizing the proliferation of eponyms. An appendix tabulates eponyms and their numerous orthographic variants published before 1835 within Erica, and provides the correct orthography for these epithets.


INTRODUCTION
The early history of the discovery of the flora of south ern Africa is well summarized by Gunn & Codd (1981), and a brief historical sketch of the description and depic tion of Cape species of Erica prefaces Baker & Oliver (1968). This paper concentrates on the horticultural histo ry of southern African Erica spp. in Europe, notes evi dence for deliberate hybridization of the so-called Cape heaths by European horticulturists and discusses some of the nomenclatural consequences of the naming of these plants by miscellaneous botanists and nurserymen.
The exploration of southern Africa by Europeans com menced, at least as far as extant historical documents record, with the voyages of Portuguese navigators in the late fifteenth century . With the discovery of this new route to the East Indies. Dutch. French and English vessels soon joined the Portuguese and began to sail around the south of Africa into the Indian Ocean. The formation of the Honourable East India Company in England and Vereenigde Oost-indische Compagnie in the Netherlands added further impetus and soon resulted in the first pub lished accounts of the natural history of the region. The directors of these companies frequently instructed the cap tains of their vessels to bring back any objects that they thought would be of interest, not just commercially, and so by the early seventeenth century, at least, specimens of plants and animals from southern Africa were being brought to Europe. Undoubtedly, numerous botanical curiosities, including seeds, from the Cape of Good Hope reached Europe in the sixteenth century but they were not recorded in books or manuscripts and so have left no trace.
The earliest botanical specimen from the southernmost part of Africa illustrated in a European publication was an inflorescence of Protea neriifolia R.Br. depicted by L'Écluse (ohm Clusius) in Exoticorum libri decem (Clusius 1605;Kerkham 1988;Rourke 1980). L'Écluse also first reported an instance of a Cape species in cultivation in a European garden, that being 'Omithogalum aethiopicum*, the bulbs of w hich had been collected by sailors at the Cape of Good Hope (Clusius 1611; Gunn & Codd 1981: 13). The inflorescence of Protea neriifolia is a tough object which will not disintegrate easily, and so its survival as a curiosi ty is not unexpected. Bulbs, corms and rhizomes, while perishable, stood a reasonable chance of remaining viable and reaching European collectors despite the numerous hazards of sea voyages in that era. Thereafter, southern African plants, especially those native to the vicinity of the Cape of Good Hope, became increasingly familiar, even commonplace, in European gardens, and numerous botani cal works contained illustrations of Cape species, predomi nantly bulbs, succulents and plants with tough rhizomes.
While Erica spp. are abundant in the coastal peripheries likely to have been visited by sailors (Oliver & Oliver 2000). they are not so easy to preserve. Heaths resent dis turbance and are unlikely to have survived transport alive at that period. This was not yet the age of scientific expe ditions staffed by individuals who knew how to preserve, by pressing and drying specimens of plants such as Erica. or how to care for liv ing plants on ocean-going vessels. Furthermore, the collection of seeds was probably a ran dom happening, a seaman or curious traveller taking a chance w hen he saw some ripe fruits-gathering and keep ing the minute seeds of Erica spp. would have required deliberate actions at the right time of the year. Bulbs and succulents were much easier to gather-they could be obtained in quantity and the chance taken that a few would surv ive the rigours of an Atlantic voyage in a sailing ship which, given the vagaries of winds and currents, usually took around three months.

THE FIRST CAPE HEATHS IN CULTIVATION IN EUROPE
There is evidence from the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century that at least one Cape species of Erica 340 had been successfully cultivated in the Netherlands. Wijnands (1983) recorded that a painting by Maria Moninckx, dated between 1686 and 1706, contained in volume 8 of the unpublished 'Afteekeningen van verscheyden vreemde gewassen; in de Medicyn-Hoff der Stadt Amsteldam', depicts E. curvirostris Salisb., a species that grew in the vicinity of the Dutch settlement at the Cape of Good Hope. The painting cannot be precisely dated and was not published by Casper Commelin (Wijnands 1983: 94, 95), but its existence proves that before 1707 at least one Cape Erica had bloomed in Dutch gardens.
The earliest published illustrations of Cape Erica spp. date from the same period. Plukenet (1700) includ ed three in Almagesti botanici mantissa: E. plukenetii L., E. curviflora L. and E. bruniades L. (Baker & Oliver 1968). Almagesti botanici mantissa was one of four vol umes which Henrey (1975: 1: 140-142) described as a 'great catalogue of plants'. There is no evidence the Erica spp. were illustrated from living plants-on the contrary, the engravings seem to portray specimens that were plucked from the wild and pressed. This accords with what is known about the plants described and depicted in Plukenet's books. Many of the illustrations were done from specimens in his own herbarium that had been obtained from a worldwide network of corre spondents (Henrey 1975: 1: 142). The same applies to Seba's Locupletissimi rerum naturalium (1734-1765) -Cape Erica spp. were illustrated from Seba's Kunstkamer, from pressed specimens, not from garden plants.
Indisputable evidence that Cape Erica spp. were in cultivation, at least in specialized collections, by the 1730s. is contained in the herbarium of George Clifford's garden at Hartecamp. the Netherlands, and in the associ ated book by Linnaeus (1738: 147. 148). According to Linnaeus, Clifford grew five different African heaths, including E. curviflora (Linnaeus 1738: 148), which Plukenet (1700) had illustrated.
Cape Erica spp. are not easy for northern European gardeners to grow, even today with modem computercontrolled glasshouses. The vast majority cannot be cul tivated outdoors all year round because they are frostsensitive. They require lime-free soil, and when cultivat ed in containers, the watering regime has to be carefully regulated. The fact that they had to be kept indoors at least during the late autumn, winter and early spring meant that only gardeners possessing heated conservatories could attempt their cultivation. In the early eighteenth century, greenhouses were heated by either free-standing stoves or smoked-filled Hues built into the walls. Furthermore, especially in winter, these buildings were poorly venti lated and had low light levels, two more factors that mil itated against success in the cultivation of these plants. However, as the design of greenhouses and conservato ries improved, especially once roof slates were replaced with glass panes, and as gardeners became more familiar with the plants' cultural requirements, more species were successfully grown. Indeed, during the first half of the nineteenth century, the skills needed for the successful cultivation of Cape heaths had been so well mastered that these plants became extraordinarily fashionable.
The horticultural progress went in tandem with botan ical exploration of the Cape of Cnxxi Hope. BOTANICAL COLLECTORS Linnaeus (1753) published 12 names for species of Erica from southern Africa-but Species plantarum was not a catalogue of plants in gardens. The number of named species increased steadily in the three following decades (Figure 1). By the end of the 1760s, about 63 Cape Erica spp. (including those originally placed in Blaeria) had been given Latin binomials. The 1770s saw 27 more names published, and during the 1780s another 54 Erica names appeared in print, almost 40 of these being coined by Thunberg (1785).
During the late eighteenth century. Cape Erica spp. were introduced into European gardens, principally by seed gathered in the wild. In 1789 William Aiton pub lished Hortus kewensis. for which Daniel Solander sup plied the descriptions of seven new species of Erica from the Cape: one proved to be an already described species, but six were previously unknown. These had all been raised from seed collected by Francis Masson (1741-1805, who was the first collector to make an impact in the horticultural, as distinct from the purely botanical, aspects of Cape Erica spp. The new' species originated from his first visit to the Cape, which had lasted two and a half years, from October 1772 to March or April 1775. According to Masson's ( 1776) own accounts of his 'three journeys from Cape Town into the southern parts of A frica'. most of his Erica seeds w ere obtained during his first extended expedition which started in December 1772 and ended in late January or early February 1773 (Masson 1776: Bradlow 1994. Of that first expedition, from Cape Town via Paarl. Franschhoek. Stellenbosch and Swartberg to Swellendam and back. Masson (1776: Bradlow 1994: 109) stated: 'It was on this journey that I collected the seed of the many beautiful species of Erica which, I find, have succeeded so well in the Royal Garden at Kew'. Solander (Aiton 1789) attributed to Masson the collection or introduction of 18 Cape species during 1774: two of his collections are dated 1773 and three are dated 1775. In all. more than half of the 41 Erica spp. listed at Kew in 1789 had been raised from seed obtained by Masson at the Cape.
Masson returned to England in 1775, and 11 years later, in 1786. went back to the Cape where he remained for more than nine further years. While it appears that he did not travel as extensively during this second visit, the extended sojourn clearly gave Masson the opportunity to plan seed-collecting trips; unlike the 'passing' collector, he could go to a particular place at different seasons, gathering specimens in flower for making into herbarium specimens and subsequently returning to collect fresh, ripe seeds for introducing the particular plant into gar dens. By 1792. six years after his return to Cape Town, the specially built greenhouse in the Royal Garden at Kew contained more than 80 different Erica spp. (Hepper 1989: Bradlow 1994. Aiton (1811) attributed a further 63 Erica spp. to Masson, collected and intro duced between 1787 and 1795. some through James Lee's Hammersmith nursery (Willson 1961 Other collectors were active for private or commercial patrons. William Paterson, sent to the Cape in 1777 by the Countess of Strathmore to collect for her garden, does not feature in Hortus kewensis. He remained at the Cape until 1780, making four plant-collecting trips, and sent seeds back to various contacts in England including James Lee (Willson 1961). While the introduction of no Erica spp. is attributed to him, Paterson was commemorated in E. patersonii Andrews. (Contrary to Coats's footnote (1969: 257), William Paterson was indeed the same person who was afterwards governor of New South Wales.) Emperor Joseph II of Austria sent two gardeners, Georg Scholl and Franz Boos, to the southern hemi sphere to collect for the royal gardens in Vienna. They met Francis Masson at the Cape and went on a brief col lecting trip with him. Boos left in February 1787 for Mauritius, leaving Scholl at the Cape to continue col lecting. Boos returned to the Cape briefly a year later and then travelled back to Austria with a large collection of specimens, apparently including living plants. However, once again Scholl remained behind: indeed, he was 'obliged to remain ... contrary to his orders' (see Bradlow 1994) in Cape Town until 1799 because he was unable to get a passage on a ship that would also carry his living plants. For a while Scholl lived under the protection of Colonel Robert Jacob Gordon (1743Gordon ( -1795, in whose garden he cared for the plants he had collected. From these he harvested seeds which were sent to Vienna (Gunn & Codd 1981: 170, 171). When he did return to Vienna in 1799, Scholl evidently also had a substantial consignment of live plants including Erica spp. (Hitchcock 2003;Oliver 2003), a most remarkable achievement because, as far as is known, all other eigh teenth and early nineteenth century introductions were effected by seed. Scholl's plants do not appear to have had as much horticultural impact as Masson's or Niven's (see below), and no new species were described from his or Boos' herbarium specimens (Dulfer 1965 As far as introduction of Cape heaths into cultivation in England is concerned, the next, and most prolific col lector represented at Kew before 1811 was James Niven (± 1774-1827) who collected in the Cape region between 1798 and 1812 (Nelson & Rourke 1993), returning briefly to England in 1803. His first patron was George Hibbert, but after 1803 he collected for a consortium in cluding the Empress Josephine of France and the London nursery of Messrs Lee and Kennedy. Aiton (1811) attrib uted 31 Erica spp. to Niven, dating the introductions between 1799 and 1804. His introductions were un doubtedly more numerous but accurate data are not available because most subsequent publications do not attribute individual species to particular collectors (see Appendix 1 for a list of Erica spp. introduced by Messrs Lee & Kennedy). Niven collected thousands of herbari um specimens -his Erica series bear numbers up to 297 but there are many instances of individual numbers being repeated (for instance, seven sheets numbered 21 are known, and these represent three distinct species from three separate localities). Of course he would also have collected species that had already been introduced by Masson. An indication of the extent of his seed gather ings can be obtained by analysing his so-called Erica manuscript (now in the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew) which is, in fact, an hortus siccus that he compiled, pre sumably to enable him to link herbarium specimens gath ered from plants in bloom with seeds gathered weeks or months later. The extant manuscript, which relates to his earlier visit to the Cape, is incomplete yet contains about 250 descriptions of heaths; 98 of the entries include a note about seed, usually indicating the month or months when this was ripe. Occasionally Niven noted that seed was not obtained: under 'Erica smithiana' he recorded that seed was 'near ripe or gone April' [f. 59rJ; of anoth er unnamed species he recorded, 'Good seed is scarcely to be had in the winter months' [f. 41r]; and while seed of 'Erica thunbergii' was ripe in December, Niven wrote 'not got' in the manuscript [f. 59v].

Few subsequent collectors matched Masson's and
Niven's combination of gathering both herbarium spec imens and fresh seed. Aiton (1811) credited John Roxburgh (± 1777-±1817) with the introduction of two Erica spp. There is no doubt that he knew Niven and worked alongside him when both men were at the Cape between 1798 and 1804. Young Roxburgh had arrived early in 1798, accompanied by his father. William (1751-1815) who remained at the Cape only until October 1799 (Gunn & Codd 1981: 302, 303). At least one ot the Roxburghs provided names for new Erica spp.; Salisbury (1802) credited John with 20 manuscript names, while Niven's herbarium specimens bear at least 30 other names attributed simply to 'Roxburgh*. Niven's Erica manuscript also contains references to names coined by Roxburgh, but it is not now possible to determine unequivocally whether this was father or son -William is the more likely person to have coined names.
Salisbury (1802) also credited Jacob (? James) Mulder, about whom nothing more is known, with collecting Cape heaths, but Mulder seems only to have gathered herbarium specimens.
By the end of the 1810s, the flow of Erica seeds into Europe seems to have virtually ceased. Following Niven's return to Britain in 1812, there was apparently no-one actively seeking new Cape heaths for introduc tion, with one enigmatic exception. Andrews (post 1823), when describing E. baueri, recorded that 'We found this new species ... in bloom at the Hammersmith nursery in the autumn of 1823, under the specific title of Bauera [sic] ... Throughout this extensive Genus of plants, we do not know any one it resembles at present: but in three or four years time the case may be different, Mr Lee having a collector now in the interior of the Cape in search of novelties; and should his attempt in explor ing that botanic mine prove successful, we may expect an importation of many distinct species and beautiful varieties'.
The name of the collector has not been determined beyond doubt, nor what he may have introduced, if any thing. It is possible that the individual was James Bowie whose interest in Cape heaths is well demonstrated by an article, written by him (Bowie 1826), relating his obser vations on the plants in their natural habitats to their cul tivation in English gardens. Bowie returned to the Cape 'on his own account' (Coats 1969: 264: Gunn & Codd 1981 in 1827 -there is no explicit statement about him collecting for Lee. but it is not at all unlikely that Lee was among the clients Bowie may have secured. Undoubtedly one reason for the falling off in intro ductions was the cost of sending, equipping and main taining a collector at the Cape of Good Hope for not less than a year. There was. however, a much less expensive way of ensuring a supply of beautiful new heaths-arti ficial hybridization. In fact, the list of Erica spp. credited to Rollisson by Aiton (1811) included 16 names, and all are now gener ally acknowledged as applying to hybrids, and it is clear that Rollisson never ventured to the Cape, nor did he maintain a collector there. Gorer (1978: 138) did note Herbert's work on raising hybrids of Gladiolus and of Erica but did not expand on the latter. While both Bentham (1839) and Regel (1842) make it clear that they considered certain 'species' were hybrids, the origins of many have remained vague or entirely unknown.

William Rollisson o f Tooting
The most prominent name in nineteenth-century accounts of European-raised Erica hybrids is that of William Rollisson (± 1765Rollisson (± -1842, founder of the Spring field Nursery. Upper Tooting. Surrey, which was famous for its orchids. (Rollisson's surname was. and still is. very fre quently misspelled Rollinson.) Undoubtedly, he was the first to raise artificially created hybrids of the Cape heaths but. for commercial reasons, he never announced his achievement. His priority is made clear by two sources. Firstly, by a short note written by his eldest son George (± 1799-1879) and published in The Gardeners' Chronicle on 8 July 1843 in w hich were listed the names of more than 90 hybrids raised by William Rollisson (Rollisson 1843). The second source, which contains the most remarkable account of early attempts to cross-breed Cape Erica spp., was written by W.H. Story (1848) who was himself an important hybridizer, although he is an obscure person who is not given an entry in Desmond & Ellwood (1994 In 1826. two lists of Messrs Rollisson's heaths were published in The Gardener's Magazine (Rollisson 1826a, b): the latter w as a month-by-month account of those in bloom. These lists included 288 names. No hybrids are mentioned, nor is any explicitly indicated, unless the plant called Rollisson's Blanda' is counted. Rollisson's second list was followed by James Bowie's (1826) arti cle about the cultivation of Cape heaths.

The Hon. and Very Rev. William Herbert
Whereas Rollisson remained 'silent*.The Hon. and Veiy Rev. William Herbert (1778-1847), one-time dean of Manchester, an authority on Amarv llidaceae and Iridaceae. was one of the first to write about 'hybridization amongst vegetables' (Herbert 1847;Steam 1952). In a paper (Her bert 1847: 87) written shortly before his death there is a lit tle-known paragraph about Cape Erica hybrids: 'We learn that most of the fine heaths of South Africa are very local. About thirty years ago I announced that I had crossed E. vestita coccinea with jasminiflora (though \ l r Salisbury fancied they were of two separate genera, on account o f the shape of the seed-podsl; and it is now ascertained that Mr. Rollisson. of Tooting, raised E. jasminiflora by mule impregnation between E. Aytom [sic] and ampullacea. and several others, of which no wild specimens have been found, and kept his secret until his death for the sake of profit. The genus Erica not yielding its pollen till the anthers are forcibly touched, and having the stigma therefore extremely likely to be hybridized in a wild state, there seems rea son to believe that the species have been multiplied on the African wastes not merely by the variation of soil and position, but still fur ther bv the intermixture of the various forms w hich had so arisen. ' Herbert first announced his work on Erica when he spoke about hybrids at a meeting of the Horticultural Society of London on 7 July 1818. The published version of this paper (Herbert 1818: 196) concluded with this scanty comment: "and the new heaths I have already obtained, are most distinct and remarkable, the individu als of each new species [sic] being perfectly uniform'. However, in his monograph on Amaryllidaceae, Herbert (1837) was more explicit: 'Several most beautiful mule Gladioli and Ericae, which had been raised at Mitcham between the years 1808 and 1814, and removed from thence to Spofforth. have also flowered there, but had not been made known to the public till the year 1819 [iic]' (Herbert 1837: 356). (Herbert was appointed Rector of Spofforth. Yorkshire, in 1814.) Remarkably, while the names given to many of Rollisson's hybrids are known -there are more than 170 entries in The Heather Society's database -not a single record of any of Herbert's hybrids has been traced and there is no Erica bearing his name. The explanation lies in the fact (see below) that Herbert lost some (if not all) of his Cape heath hybrids when he moved from Mitcham to Spofforth.
Herbert (1837: 374) made some remarkable com ments about pollination biology in Cape species of Erica and drew some equally remarkable conclusions: 'In the tubular African heaths the pollen rem ains confined, unless the anthers are touched by something inserted, as the point o f a pin or the proboscis o f an insect, when they spring asunder and discharge it. This genus, therefore, affords greater facility of interm ixing, and it is probable that some o f the native species, which are said to be quite local, have been produced by accidental interm ixing ... Amongst other crosses o f Ericae, I obtained at M itcham many plants from two very dissimilar, namely, from Jasm iniflora by vestita coccinea. which had the foliage slender and near an inch long. The late Mr. Salisbury had conceived that those two species, being distinguished by a shorter and a large and more pointed pod. were referable to two distinct genera to which he had accordingly assigned names, and he told me that I should fail in my attempts to cross them; which was answered by shewing him the seedlings then sever al inches high. They were all lost on, or soon after, removing to Spofforth before they had flowered, though one o f them was above a foot high.' Not everyone approved of Herbert's work: 'Soon after the publication of [my] communication to the [Horticultural] Society, I was accosted by more than one botanist with the words, 'I do not thank you for your mules,' and other expressions of like import, under an impression that the intermixture of species which had been commenced, and was earnestly recommended to cultivators, would confuse the labours of botanists, and force them to work their way through a wilderness of uncertainty' (Herbert 1837: 336).
The facility with which hybrids could be created by artificial cross-pollination of Cape Erica spp. was evi dently widely appreciated in the first half of the nine teenth century. Regarding the plethora of hybrids, a unidentified reviewer using the initials E.M., writing in The Gardeners' Chronicle on 14 January 1843 about a recently published monograph (Regel 1842) on heaths, commented: The number [of speciesj enum erated is 335, besides vari eties, but Mr. Regel includes as species many o f the garden hybrids, which are now multiplied almost indefinitely, so as to render almost fruitless any attempt at describing them on paper. O f two hybrid seedlings raised from the same parents, one will often have more o f the character of one o f the parents than the other; and thus a complete description o f all the hybrids in cul tivation would have to include a separate account o f almost every individual raised. It appears to us that it would have been better, even for garden purposes, to have enumerated as species only such permanent ones as are really so in a botanical sense; and after each species to have referred to the hybrids which either are known to have that species as one of their parents, or to have such an affinity to it to make that probable.' Thus we have to view the population of Cape heaths in cultivation in Europe during the last decade of the eighteenth and first half of the nineteenth centuries as comprising a vast assemblage of wild-collected, seedraised species, multifarious seedlings that were primary hybrids, and, undoubtedly, innumerable backcrosses. The concomitant variation presented new challenges, especially in identification and naming.

Other hybridizers
Other British nineteenth-century nurserymen and garden ers who raised, or claimed to have created, hybrid Cape heaths were William McNab (1780-1848), author of the first English-language manual on the cultivation of Cape heaths (McNab 1832), and superintendent of Edinburgh Botanic Garden (£. xmacnahiana, E. xneillii); Andrew Turnbull (1804-1886), gardener at Bothwell Castle, Lanarkshire, Scotland, whose hybrids included E. xtortuliflora and sever al others which were given 'fancy' (i.e. cultivar) names; W.H. Story, the originator of E. xspenceriana, who was quoted above and about whom so little is recorded; and Messrs Lee and Kennedy, Vineyard Nurseries, Hammer smith, whose introductions include at least two putative hybrids E. xbandonii and E. xcoventryi. Among the others, we single out for mention John Williams, gardener to John Willmore of Oldford. near Birmingham, who raised E. xpseudovestita, E. xpyriformis and E. xwillmorei (a much confused and misapplied name; see Nelson & Oliver 2003). Maund & Henslow (1839), noting that E. xpseudovestita was 'one amongst many hundred varieties raised by the same indefatigable cultivator', ventured the opinion that 'generating, as it may be termed, numerous attractive plants, like that which we now figure, may be counted amongst the benefits accruing to society by the united zeal of a liberal proprietor and intelligent gardener.' When an illustration of E. xmurrayana, one of Turnbull's crosses, was published. Joseph Paxton (1844) remarked that 'The practice of hybri dising Heaths has now been carried to a considerable extent by some cultivators, and our pages [Magazine o f botany] have contained figures of several excellent seedlings. But no one will assert that there is not an ample field for further improvement in this way, since the genus is so very large, and the species so varied*.
There can be little doubt, for comments by various authors including Regel (1842), that hybrids were also produced in gardens in France and Germany but detailed histories are wanting.
While the principal purpose in creating the hybrids was to ensure a continuing supply of novelties for cus tomers, towards the end of the nineteenth century, nurs erymen were considering the possibility of deliberately breeding better plants. One of the aims of the breeders of Cape heaths was to produce flowers that were not cov ered by gum because the sticky flowers trapped dust and became unsightly; for example, among heaths listed in the horticultural press during 1878 was a 'gumless' seedling named £. Instead, nurserymen, at least those around London, were concentrating on mass production of a few selected Cape heaths for the winter pot-flower market. Hooker (1874) remarked that 'a few easily propagated hybrids for decorative purposes are all that are to be seen of this lovely tribe in most of the best establishments of England', while a report in The garden early in 1879 noted that growers were known to sell more than two hundred thousand Cape heaths in the pre-Christmas peri o d -'About Christmas time the markets are crammed with little bushy plants' (Anon. 1879). The writer com mented that in some English nurseries Cape heaths were growing as 'freely as scarlet pelargonium'. A little more than a decade later. Watson (1892) made similar remarks.

Hybrids between European ('hardy') and Cape heaths
Having so easily achieved hybrids between the exotic Cape Erica spp., it was not unnatural for European hor ticulturists to speculate about the possibilities of crossing these with the less showy but frost-hardy European species. The idea was certainly current in the mid-1800s as shown by this comment about 'crossing splendid species of South Africa with the hardy natives' in The Gardeners' Chronicle of 17 March 1849: 'I need not say that a successful result would be most interesting' ('A Devonian' 1849; see also 'A Lancastrian' 1849). George Gordon (1863) wrote on the same topic in 1863 without adding anything new.
In fact, there is no evidence that crosses between the Cape and European species were tried, let alone effected, during the nineteenth century. Only in the late twentieth century was this achieved and primary hybrids were announced between E. arborea L. and E. baccans L. (£. xafroeuropaea D.C.McClint.) (Jones 1988: McClintock 1998, 1999 fig. 2)]. E. curvirostris x arborea. E. baueri Andrews [as bauera] x australis L.. and E. sub-divaricata PJ.Bergius x carnea L. (Jones 1988). In the 1970s John Crewe-Brown, in Johannesburg, attempted various crosses between European and African species including £. caffra L. x australis (in Joyner 1979).

PROLIFERATION OF EPONYMS & ORTHOGRAPHIC BEDLAM
In the decades immediately following publication of Species plantarum (Linnaeus 1753), the choice of names for the new Erica spp. was uncomplicated. A principal character, or the superficial resemblance to plants of another familiar genus, or a toponym provided the majority of the epithets. Only one species was named after an individual and that was Linnaeus's £. plukenetii, commemorating Dr Leonard Plukenet who, as noted, had illustrated the species in 1700.
By the end of the 1770s, six more individuals had been commemorated by Linnaeus, by his son (Linnaeus ' 1781') and by L J. Montin (1774): P.J. Bergius in E. bergiana: James Petiver in £. petiveri: Anders Sparrman in £. sparrmanii: Carl Thunberg in £. thunbergii. Linnaeus the younger also encapsulated Francis Mas son's name in £. massonii. and named £. monsoniana after Lady Ann Monson: both these epithets were pub lished in 1782 (Linnaeus '1781'). Still, the majority of specific epithets were related to a distinctive characteris tic of the new species.
The sudden and continuing influx after 1772 of sub stantial numbers of new Erica spp. presented a major problem for European botanists. Studying, describing and naming the countless new plants that Masson and Niven, in particular, had collected, was evidently beyond the capacities of the botanists then active at least in Britain -and the Cape of Good Hope was not the only place yielding undreamt of botanical riches. Com pounding the difficulties for the botanists were the very numerous seedlings of unknown species of Erica that were sprouting in gardens throughout Britain, France, Germany and other countries. Nurserymen who had obtained seeds or. subsequently, seedlings required names for these so that they could sell the plants. The botanists were either overwhelmed or indifferent, and so the naming of the Cape heaths became a haphazard process with horticulturists, ill-versed in. or entirely ignorant of. the principles of botanical nomenclature, taking over the primary role of coining and applying names. Not only did the nursery men give names to their plants, they also printed those names in cataloguestheir businesses demanded this-with accompanying descriptions, no matter how brief, and not infrequently the given names were misspelled or misprinted. The results approached bedlam w ith as many as nine differ ent variants of a single epithet (as prime example is £. savileae Andrews, see Nelson & Scarbrough 2003).
It is clear from manuscripts and published catalogues dating from the first decade of the 1800s that many Cape heaths had been given names in gardens and nurseries without the normal accompaniment of detailed, compar ative study. It is also evident that collectors, including Francis Masson (1776: see Bradlow 1994. James Niven and the Roxburghs. coined names in the field and used them to label their pressed specimens and seed packets.
Many of these names persisted and were published, usu ally without accompanying descriptions, in nurserymen's catalogues and garden lists. For example, the name 'Erica hibbertii' appears on James Niven's herbarium specimens (no. 171); on one of these, in the herbarium of Trinity College Dublin (TCD), the epithet is attributed to Niven. The particular epithet was employed at the Dublin Society's Botanic Gardens, Glasnevin, in 1802, undoubtedly attached to a plant purchased from Messrs Lee and Kennedy (Nelson & McCracken 1987), and it appeared in print at least a year before Andrews formal ly published the binomial in Coloured engravings o f heaths {1805). This is not an isolated example. The name E. humea was first printed in 1809, yet a description was not formally published in The Botanical Cabinet (Loddiges 1817(Loddiges -1833 until a decade later when the epi thet was rendered E. humeana. Likewise, E. scholliana was described in 1821, but that name, as E. schollii, was in print no less than 17 years earlier.
There were other problems. Horticulturists in differ ent countries produced lists and' catalogues without knowing whether a particular seedling Erica had already been named elsewhere-they had neither the expertise, nor resources, nor time to carry out the necessary en quiries and research. Furthermore, voucher herbarium specimens were hardly ever preserved so that when botanists eventually came to sort out the nomenclatural tangle, they had no material for comparison. Add to that an opinionated, acerbic English botanist: Richard Anthony Salisbury (1761Salisbury ( -1829.

Richard Salisbury
To his credit, Salisbury did attempt to produce a prop er monograph of the genus (Salisbury 1802), but he had some contrary opinions about names, rejecting any that commemorated individuals, and when in his opinion a descriptive epithet was not appropriate he simply substi tuted one that he deemed better.
In Rees' The Cyclopaedia, the president of the Linnean Society, James Edward Smith (1809). in what amounts to a precis of Salisbury's monograph, applaud ed Salisbury's attempt to arrange the species in natural subdivisions. In fact, Salisbury had a remarkable, pre scient view of Erica, as Smith acknowledged. Salisbury (1802) had rejected Linnaeus' genus Blaeria, and clus tered together 15 species 'having but four stamens', some of which had formerly been in Blaeria: "Nor can we much object to the union of these two genera, except that in so vast a tribe, we may be glad of even so slight a cir cumstance as number to make a genus, when there is moreover such a difference in habit as this very arrangement o f Mr. Salisbury's implies. If indeed a few species of Erica, here and there in the different natural subdivisions, were tetrandrous. nobody would think of separating them for that reason [Smith 1809].' However, Smith was not impressed by some of Salisbury's nomenclatural decisions. Regarding E. nigrita 'of Linn[aeus] and Thunberg. so called from its con spicuous dark anthers, elegantly contrasted with the white corolla and calyx'. Smith noted that Salisbury "is pleased to denominate (this] volutaflora'. The name of "our elegant English' E. tetrali.x L. was 'changed by Mr.
Salisbury to botuliformis, sausage-shaped.... Next comes by itself our common British cinerea [L.] ... more happi ly, but without any necessity, altered to mutabilis'. However, E. milleflora Bergius was, in Smith's view, 'well retained by Mr. Salisbury, in preference to the inac curate one,paniculata, given by Linnaeus'.
Another to object to Salisbury's alteration of estab lished names was Carl Willdenow (1809: 415), in a cata logue of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Berlin. Noting that he was deliberately omitting 'several species [of Erica] grown from seeds, the flowers of which I have not yet seen', he reproached Salisbury thus: "The most illustrious Salisbury ... illustrated the genus of Erica with many observations and. using this occasion, reproached me with having accepted inappropriate and false gar deners' names. Names of plants [that are) now widespread, just as [those] applied long since, are to be scrupulously preserved. In the same way, whatever the naming of a plant is, it suffices if only its character can have fixed [distinguishing] marks. The changes which the illustrious Salisbury has adopted in his Prodromus [Salisbury 1796], in this dissertation [Salisbury 1802)

Eponyms
Returning to the matter of specific epithets derived from personal names, at this period there were no rules governing the formation of such names. Smith (1809) made this most pointed comment at the end of his entry on Erica for Rees' The Cyclopaedia: 'We trust, that those who may have occasion to describe new heaths in future, will, as far as they are competent, keep the above arrangement in view, as they will find it very instructive, however they may differ from Mr. Salisbury in principles of nomenclature. To this subject we have scarcely found it neces sary to advert, except occasionally, and we rather pass over in silence what we cannot approve. This botanist rejects all names of persons as applied to the species o f any genus. Mr. Dryander once began a more useful reformation o f such names of Ericie, making those which commemorate a writer on the subject end in ana. as Sebana; those which apply to a collector only, in the genitive case, as Massoni. The greatest and most correct infor mation is still to be expected from this able botanist, in the intended new edition o f Mr. A iton's Hortus Kewensis, where the genus o f Erica must always make a principal figure.' The topic of the correct termination for epithets de rived from personal names has been vexatious ever since. Lindley (1832) commented on it and, as Steam (1973) pointed out, several attempts have been made to differentiate the use of substantive and adjectival (with the termination -anus, -a. -urn) epithets along the lines enunciated by Dry ander and Lindley. but they have never been successful. Commenting on Lindley's remarks. Steam (1973: 294) noted that 'most of those who then and thereafter named new species paid no attention what ever to it; probably they never knew such a distinction had been proposed'.
In the second edition of Hortus kewensis the princi ples described by Smith (1809) were followed, with, for example, the Erica epithets archeria amended to archeriana, hibbertia to hibbertiana, lambertia to latnbertiana, and even monsoniana to nionsoniae. Yet this did not, and does not, resolve the difficulties-under the current rules of nomenclature [International Code of Botanical Nomenclature, (St Louis Code): Greuter et al. 2000], it is not permissible to change the termination of an epithet except to correct certain errors (for example, if the gender is inappropriate); misinterpretation of the role of the person commemorated is not deemed to be an error. Changing archeria to archeriana is forbidden but amending the termination to correct the gender is required-archerae is the correct orthography.
Examining the earliest use of personal names for epi thets within Erica (Appendix 2), it is clear that their authors (Linnaeus father and son. and Montin) were abiding by this, then unwritten, distinction: petiveri, sparrmanii and thunbergii after Petiver (author), Sparrman (collector) and Thunberg (collector), whereas bergiana and monsoniana were in compliment to Bergius and Lady Monson. It was the advent of essen tially horticultural publications that precipitated a large increase in personal epithets, and the ensuing bedlam.
The abundance of unnamed Erica spp. following espe cially Masson's and Niven's plant introductions from the Cape provided many opportunities to coin names. While the majority of new species were given names that encap sulated a distinctive morphological character, the need for horticulturists especially to recognize patronage also led to a proliferation of personal epithets. One frequent feature of the names deriving from horti cultural works published at the end of the eighteenth cen tury and during the first half of the nineteenth century is the use of eponyms with the termination -ia (or -a). In the past this has been interpreted as indicating that the author was using a pre-existing generic name in apposition to the name Erica (Oliver & Oliver 2002: 43). For example, it might be thought that in coining E. banksia. Andrews was employing the younger Linnaeus's generic name Banksia (Proteaceae), or in the case of E. hibbertia that he was using the generic name Hibbertia (Dilleniaceae). Whereas the generic names Aitonia. Banksia, Bauer a. Hibbertia and others (see Table 1) already existed when Andrews published E. aitonia. E. banksia. E. bauera and E. hibber tia, there have never been genera named, for example, Bandonia, Coventrya. Savileia, Shannonea, Templea or Uhria. Examination of the chronology of other names makes clear that they also are not generic names used in apposition but are substantival epithets with incorrect ter minations. Archeria and Nivenia were coined after the publication of these epithets for species of Erica-Ventenat published Nivenia (Iridaceae) in 1808 (Ventenat 1808); Hooker published Archeria (Epacridaceae) in 1860 (Hooker 1860).
Under the present International Code of Botanical Nomenclature (St Louis Code) (Greuter et al. 2000), such names have to be corrected-they have incorrect terminations. The -ia has to be replaced with the appro priate genitive ending. This means that it is essential to establish the gender of the person who was commemo rated. The variants' spellings can be treated as ortho graphical variants because only one nomenclatural type is involved, and under Article 61 (Greuter et al. 2000) the one variant 'that conforms to the rules' needs to be speci fied and retained.  have corrected the terminations for E. banksii. E. baueri and E. hibbertii. and the remaining names are corrected in Appendix 2. CONCLUSION Erica is one of the largest genera among flowering plants containing ± 860 species: about 760 of these are endemic in southern Africa (Oliver & Oliver 2003), ± 50 are recorded in Madagascar and adjacent islands, while another 30 Erica species inhabit Africa north of the Zambezi (excluding the extreme northwest) (see Oliver 2000: fig. 15). Around 20 species, plus three naturally occurring hybrids, are recognized in Europe. Macaronesia and adjacent parts of northwest Africa, and western Asia.
Given these facts alone, it is not surprising that during the past 250 years, since the publication of Species plantarum (Linnaeus 1753). many more than 860 names have been bestowed on Erica species. The database for the 'African' ("non-hardy') section of the International reg ister o f heather names (Nelson & Small 2004) dramati cally demonstrates the nomenclatural bedlam to which we have referred. While the total of all names reported on the International Plant Names Index website (http://www.ipni.org) for Erica (as redefined in Oliver 2000) and its component genera is around 3 350. the database compiled by The Heather Society now includes more than 6 100 entries for names. More than two-thirds of these (± 4 200 = 699H are records comprising only a specific epithet, whereas ± 1 650 record names of taxa at the rank of subspecies or below (21%). Only ± 310 cultivar names are in this part of the database (5%).