History of gardenia plants

Gardenias have been cultivated in Chinese gardens for well over a thousand years, but Europeans and Americans have known of them for only a few hundred years. This plant belongs to the same family as coffee, pentas, firebush and ixora.

Discovered by the enthusiastic plant hunters of the 18th century gardenias were found and sent to America to an amateur naturalist named Alexander Garden (1730-1791) of Charleston, South Carolina, who studied medicine and botany in Scotland.

The gardenia is noted for its fragrant flowers. Ranging from dwarf to a large sized bushy shrub reaching a height of 1-3 m, it leaves are simple, apposite, and dark green with a glossy upper surface.

John Ellis (1711-1776), an English botanist who provided the plant named it after Garden, whose plantation, Yeshoe, near Charleston, South Carolina, was the home of many exotic and new species.
History of gardenia plants