Berberis and the plant hunters

Berberis have an interesting history - reaching our shores from the Americas.

By Ambra Edwards 09 November 2011 • 7:30am

'Red Pillar'; 'Georgei' Credit: Photo: Marianne Majerus; Getty Images

Berberis were among the first plants to reach our shores from the Americas, while nearly all the famous plant hunters have brought back a berberis for our gardens. The Victorians were fans, and between 1869 and 1875 a berberis dell was created at Kew from a former gravel pit, to showcase its rapidly growing collection and (closely related) mahonias. One of the early arrivals was free-flowering B. darwinii – discovered by Charles Darwin on his Beagle voyage in 1835, and brought from Chile by William Lobb in 1849. Ernest Wilson found sweetly scented B. julianae in China in 1900, soon followed by pink-berried B. wilsoniae, named, he claimed, after his wife. B. linearifolia, with its profusion of apricot flowers, arrived from Patagonia in 1927. Frank Kingdon-Ward (1885-1958) was rather snooty about berberis, dismissing them as all like peas in a pod. Nonetheless, as Vaughan observes, “he introduced some very nice varieties”, including B. hypokerina and B. calliantha. One wonders if he’d be pleased to know that the latter, discovered on his 1924-25 Tsangpo expedition, now flourishes on his grave.