The botanical garden of the Havana Economic Society, reported month by month for 1862
The Havana Economic Society's botanical garden published an annual return in its own journal: what was sown and weeded month by month, four cases of classified Cuban plants sent to the botanical garden of Madrid and acknowledged there, ornamental trees despatched to two Cuban ports — and to the captain general's private estate in Spain — new scientific labelling in glass-fronted tin, medicinal plants given free to the public, and the university's botany class supplied from the beds.
Why this wins its question: Havana's botanical garden appears in most accounts as a founding date and a change of site. This is one of its annual returns read as printed: the months of weeding and sowing, the four cases of classified plants that reached Madrid in good condition and were acknowledged, the eight dozen laurels sent to beautify two Cuban plazas by order of the captain general, the glass-fronted tin labels, the medicinal plants handed to the public and the specimens handed to the university's botany class — and, printed in the same column, the two cases despatched to the captain general's private estate in Spain.
Claims
Every assertion below is bound to registered sources and carries its own confidence. Weight them; do not treat the page as uniformly authoritative.
The document is an annual establishment return, printed under the heading "JARDIN BOTANICO DE LA REAL SOCIEDAD ECONOMICA" in the society's own "Anales y memorias", and introduced as "Los trabajos agrícolos efectuados en este Establecimiento en el presente año". It is set out month by month in a bracketed table and signed at the end "Habana 31 de Diciembre de 1862.— El Director, Fernando Layunta." The section report immediately before it is signed by the secretary Manuel Martínez on 18 December 1862.
The year's work as reported: January to April, the teaching beds — the "cuadros de escuela" — were re-set, the borders raised anew and the weeds that harmed the plants in them cleared; July and August, many plants from the Isla de Pinos and from Cuba itself were sown in the teaching beds; September, a general cleaning after heavy rains that carried off part of the gravel of the paths, and large seedbeds of every kind of vegetable raised, mostly in pots; October and November, the ornamental gardens made up and new seedbeds of trees and flowering shrubs formed.
The garden was also a supplier of trees to other towns by government order. In May and June "se remitieron á Sagua la Grande cuatro docenas de 'Ficus laurifolia' vulgo 'Laurel del Norte' para hermosear la Plaza de Armas de dicho puerto, como igualmente á la Isla de Pinos otras cuatro docenas para el mismo objeto, remitidas á los Sres. Tenientes Gobernadores por mandado del Excmo. Sr. Duque de la Torre" — that is, by order of the captain general of the island.
The scientific traffic with the metropolis is recorded in the same table and it runs outward from Havana: in September "se remitieron al Jardin Botánico de Madrid cuatro cajas de plantas de diferentes especies verdaderamente clasificadas, y haberlas recibido allí con toda su lozanía, segun el aviso del Sr. Director del dicho jardin". A colonial garden classifying its own material and shipping it to the Real Jardín Botánico, with the receipt acknowledged, is the relationship stated in the garden's own words.
The same table records a private consignment beside the public one, and it belongs in the account. In December "se han remitido á la Península para la finca del Excmo. Sr. Capitan General D. Francisco Serrano dos cajas de plantas; la una contiene 24 'Clusia Roseas' vulgo 'Copey' y la otra con tres docenas de 'Ficus laurifolia' vulgo 'Laurel de Norte.'" The public establishment stocked the governor's own estate in Spain, and its director printed the fact in the annual return.
A closing note lists the year's improvements and the two standing public services. The new railing was begun in October from the entrance of the Quinta de los Molinos to the railway and finished; a new scientific nomenclature or labelling was begun, so that the garden would soon show the public the scientific and vulgar names of each plant, set in oval tinplate cases with glass that open and close without deteriorating; "el Jardin Botánico sirve al público de todas las plantas y yerbas medicinales que necesita para sus dolencias, como igualmente la Real Universidad de las plantas que necesita para las demostraciones científicas de la clase de botánica que esplica su profesor."
What this return is and is not. It is the director's own annual account, printed by the institution that employed him and closing with the hope that "la Real Sociedad quedará conforme de los servicios que presta su Director" — strong evidence of the tasks performed, the consignments sent and the services the garden claimed to render, and no evidence at all of the size of the collection, of how many members of the public actually took medicinal plants, of what the botany class received in practice, or of any scientific publication issuing from the garden. The volume is a serial whose catalogue date, 1861, is earlier than the December 1862 signatures on the reports read here.