Excerpt from The Ivy, a Monograph: Comprising the History, Uses, Characteristics, and Affinities of the Plant, and a Descriptive List of All the Garden Ivies in Cultivation

It is proper, in these prefatory Observations, to indicate to what extent the author is indebted to other than his own labours and resources. As to the collection then; many of the varieties have been obtained from gardens again and again, but usually under different names, and those names too Often SO utterly unsuitable as to convey false impressions of the plants they were applied to. Others have been Obtained direct from woods and ruins, where nature had produced and planted them in her own way; and others, again, have been raised in the author's garden, and represent the capabilities of the ivy for variation as the result Of crossing. AS to the names, there was but one course possible - so it seemed, at least - and that was, to abolish them without hesitation in every case in which they had a cumbrous form, or were misleading, or were other than descriptive. The result is, that only some half-dozen of the original garden names remain, and the whole of the names in the enumeration now presented, are framed upon a system the two principal requirements of which are, that they must be as simple as possible, and in every case indicative of the most striking characteristics of the plants to which they are applied. The rude handling to which the names heretofore recognised have been subjected, will, perhaps, arouse a shadow of indignation; but the reader who is familiar with the incongruities and absurdities of botanical nomenclature, and especially the more strictly horticultural branch of it, will only need to glance through the following pages to be convinced that in a work of this kind a new and systematic nomenclature was actually needed to save it from the guilt of making confusion worse confounded.

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