horticulture
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horticulture, the branch of plant agriculture dealing with garden crops, generally fruits, vegetables, and ornamental plants. The word is derived from the Latin hortus, “garden,” and colere, “to cultivate.” As a general term, it covers all forms of garden management, but in ordinary use it refers to intensive commercial production. In terms of scale, horticulture falls between domestic gardening and field agriculture, though all forms of cultivation naturally have close links.
Horticulture is divided into the cultivation of plants for food (pomology and olericulture) and plants for ornament (floriculture and landscape horticulture). Pomology deals with fruit and nut crops. Olericulture deals with herbaceous plants for the kitchen, including, for example, carrots (edible root), asparagus (edible stem), lettuce (edible leaf), cauliflower (edible flower buds), tomatoes (edible fruit), and peas (edible seed). Floriculture deals with the production of flowers and ornamental plants; generally, cut flowers, pot plants, and greenery. Landscape horticulture is a broad category that includes plants for the landscape, including lawn turf but particularly nursery crops such as shrubs, trees, and vines.
The specialization of the horticulturist and the success of the crop are influenced by many factors. Among these are climate, terrain, and other regional variations.
Horticultural regions
Temperate zones
Temperate zones for horticulture cannot be defined exactly by lines of latitude or longitude but are usually regarded as including those areas where frost in winter occurs, even though rarely. Thus, most parts of Europe, North America, and northern Asia are included, though some parts of the United States, such as southern Florida, are considered subtropical. A few parts of the north coast of the Mediterranean and the Mediterranean islands are also subtropical. In the Southern Hemisphere, practically all of New Zealand, a few parts of Australia, and the southern part of South America have temperate climates. For horticultural purposes altitude is also a factor; the lower slopes of great mountain ranges, such as the Himalayas and the Andes, are included. Thus, the temperate zones are very wide and the range of plants that can be grown in them is enormous, probably greater than in either the subtropical or tropical zones. In the temperate zones are the great coniferous and deciduous forests: pine, spruce, fir, most of the cypresses, the deciduous oaks (but excluding many of the evergreen ones), ash, birch, and linden.
The temperate zones are also the areas of the grasses—the finest lawns particularly are in the regions of moderate or high rainfall—and of the great cereal crops. Rice is excluded as being tropical, but wheat, barley, corn (maize), and rye grow well in the temperate zones.
Plants in the temperate zones benefit from a winter resting season, which clearly differentiates them from tropical plants, which tend to grow continuously. Bulbs, annuals, herbaceous perennials, and deciduous trees become more frost-resistant with the fall of sap and therefore have a better chance of passing the resting season undamaged. Another influence is the varying length of darkness and light throughout the year, so that many plants, such as chrysanthemums, have a strong photoperiodism. The chrysanthemum flowers only in short daylight periods, although artificial lighting in nurseries can produce flowers the year round.
Most of the great gardens of the world have been developed in temperate zones. Particular features such as rose gardens, herbaceous borders, annual borders, woodland gardens, and rock gardens are also those of temperate-zone gardens. Nearly all depend for their success on the winter resting period.
Tropical zones
There is no sharp line of demarcation between the tropics and the subtropics. Just as many tropical plants can be cultivated in the subtropics, so also many subtropical and even temperate plants can be grown satisfactorily in the tropics. Elevation is a determining factor. For example, the scarlet runner bean, a common plant in temperate regions, grows, flowers, and develops pods normally on the high slopes of Mount Meru in Africa near the Equator, but it will not set pods in Hong Kong, a subtropical situation a little south of the Tropic of Cancer but at a low elevation.
In addition to elevation, another determinant is the annual distribution of rainfall. Plants that grow and flower in the monsoon areas, as in India, will not succeed where the climate is uniformly wet, as in Bougainville in the Solomon Islands. Another factor is the length of day, the number of hours the Sun is above the horizon; some plants flower only if the day is long, but others make their growth during the long days and flower when the day is short. Certain strains of the cosmos plant are so sensitive to light that where the day is always about 12 hours, as near the Equator, they flower when only a few inches high; if grown near the Tropic of Cancer or the Tropic of Capricorn, they attain a height of several feet, if the seeds are sown in the spring, before flowering in the short days of autumn and winter. Poinsettia is a short-day plant that may be seen in flower in Singapore on any day of the year, while in Trinidad it is a blaze of glory only in late December.
In the tropics of Asia and parts of Central and South America, the dominant features of the gardens are flowering trees, shrubs, and climbers. Herbaceous plants are relatively few, but many kinds of orchids can be grown.
Vegetable crops vary in kind and quality with the presence or absence of periodic dry seasons. In the uniformly wet tropics, the choice is limited to a few root crops and still fewer greens. Sweet potatoes grow and bear good crops where the average monthly rainfall, throughout the year, exceeds 25 cm (10 inches), but they grow even better where there is a dry season. The same can be said of taro, yams, and cassava. Tropical greens from the Malay Peninsula are not as good as those grown in South China, the Hawaiian Islands, and Puerto Rico. They include several spinaches, of which Chinese spinach or amaranth is the best; several cabbages; Chinese onions and chives; and several gourds, cucumbers, and, where there is a dry season, watermelons. Eggplants, peppers, and okra are widely cultivated. Many kinds of beans can be grown successfully, including the French bean from the American subtropics, the many varieties of the African cowpea, and yard-long bean. The yam bean, a native of tropical America, is grown for its edible tuber. In the drier areas the pigeon pea, the soybean, the peanut (groundnut), and the Tientsin green bean are important crops. Miscellaneous crops include watercress, ginger, lotus, and bamboo.
Geoffrey A.C. Herklots Patrick Millington Synge The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica