Botanical Transculturation: Japanese and British Knowledge and Understanding of Aucuba japonica and Larix leptolepis 1700-1920.

The article discusses the introduction of native Japanese plants to Great Britain, focusing particularly on the introductions of Aucuba japonica and Larix leptolepis during the nineteenth century. It considers the exchange of horticultural knowledge and the traditional medicinal use of plants between botanists and doctors in China, Japan, and Europe during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The authors assert that plant introductions go through three phases, they are first introduced as exotic plants, then become culturally assimilated after proving adaptable and hardy in their new environment, finally they become subjects of hybridisation, such as the creation of Larix eurolepis from Larix leptolepis and the European larch.