Gardeners Dictionary: Sanguinaria

Gardeners Dictionary:
containing The Best and Newest Methods of Cultivating and Improving The Kitchen, Fruit, Flower Garden, and Nursery; As also for Performing the Practical Parts of Agriculture: Including The Management of Vineyards, With the Methods of Making and Preserving Wine, According to the present Practice of The most skilful Vignerons in the several Wine Countries in Europe.

Together with Directions for propagating and improving, From real Practice and Experience, All sorts of Timber Trees.

The Eight Edition,
Revised and Altered according to the latest System of Botany; and Embellished with several Copper-Plates, which were not in some former Editions.

By Philip Miller, F. R. S.
Gardener tothe Worshipdul Company of Apothecaries, at their Botanic Garden in Chelsea, and Member of the Botanic Academy at Florence.

London,
Printed for the Author;
M. DCC. LXVIII.

(Lontoo 1768)


SANGUINARIA. Dill. Hort. Elth. 252. Lin. Gen. Plant. 570. Puccoon.

The CHARACTERS are,
The empalement of the flower is composed of two oval concave leaves, which fall away. It has eight oblong, obtuse, spreading petals, which are alternately narrow. It has many single stamina which are shorter than the petals, terminated by single summits, and an oblong compressed germen having no style, crowned by a permanent thick stigma with two channels. The germen becomes an oblong bellied capsule with two valves, pointed at both ends, inclosing round acute-pointed seeds.

This genus of plants is ranged in the first section of Linnæus's thirteenth class, which includes those plants whose flowers have many stamina and one style.

We have bt one SPECIES of this genus, viz.

SANGUINARIA (canadensis.) Hort. Cliff. 202. Puccoon. Chelidonium majus, Canadense acaulon. Corn. Canad. 212. Greater Celandine of Canada having no stalks.

There are some few other varieties of this plant mentioned in the Eltham Garden, but they are not fistinct species, for they vary annually, therefore it is to no purpose to mention their variations.

This lant was formerly ranged in the genus of Celandine, by the title of Chelidonium maximum Canadente acaulon; and this name of Sanguinaria was applied to it by Dr. Dillenius, who was professor of botany at Oxford. We have no proper English name for this, but as the inhabitants of America call it by the Indian name Puccoon, I have continued it here.

It is a native of most of the northern parts of America, where it grows plentifully in the woods; and in the spring, before the leaves of the trees come out, the surface of the ground is, in many places, covered with the flowers, which have some resemblance to our Wood Anemone, but they have short naked pedicles, each supporting one flower at the top. Some of these flowers will have ten or twelve petals, so that they appear to have a double range of leaves, which has occasioned their being termed double flowers; but this is only accidental, the same roots in different years producing different flowers. The roots of this plant are tuberous, and the whole plant has a yellow juice, which the Indians use to paint themselves.

This plant is hardy enough to live in the open air in England, but it should be planted in a loose soil and a sheltered situation, but not too much exposed to the sun. It is propagated by the roots, which may be taken up and parted every other year; the best time for doing of this is in September, that the roots may have time to send out fibres before the hard frost sets in. The flowers of this plant appear in April, and when they decay, the green leaves come out, which will continue till Midsummer; then they decay, and the roots remain unactive till the following autumn; so that unless the roots are marked, it will be pretty difficult to find them after their leaves decay, for they are of a dirty brown colour on the outside, so are not easily distinguished from the earth.

The plant is very proper to mix with the Dog'stooth Violet, Spring Cyclamen, Persian Iris, Bulbocodium, Sisyrinchium, and some other low growing bulbous and tuberous-rooted flowers, which require the same culture, where these will add to the variety when they are in beauty; for when the roots are strong and grow in a good soil, they will produce a great number of flowers upon each root; the roots may be planted about four or five inches asunder every way.