Named for Édouard de Ghellinck de Walle, the 19th Century Ghent plant collector, horticulturist and amateur botanist who first cultivated it in Europe, it was formally described in 1868 by Charles Antoine Lemaire, the French taxonomist who happened to be an authority on Cactaceae.
Parodia, a genus of the Cactaceae family of cacti (synonym by authority: Fric (nom. inval.))
Today the garden contains a collection of local plants and other succulents including Agavaceae, Cactaceae, succulent Euphorbia, and Liliaceae.
While Rose was employed by the national museum, he was an authority on several plants families, including Apiaceae (Parsley Family) and Cactaceae (Cactus Family).
She was principal illustrator for the journal "Addisonia" (see Addison Brown), painting the vast majority of 800 plates and working on the plates and line drawings used in Britton & Rose's "The Cactaceae".
The flora of Monito Island consists of 37 species, 36 genera, and 23 families; the largest families are Cactaceae, Poaceae and Malvaceae.
He wrote Illustrated Flora of the Northern United States, Canada, and the British Possessions (1896) with Addison Brown, and The Cactaceae with Joseph Nelson Rose.
The growth form of many cacti and species of Euphorbia is very similar, even though they belong to widely distant families.
The garden was established in 1967, and now cultivates about 1,500 species of useful plants, including collections of Cactaceae and other succulents (such as Agave, Euphorbia, Kalanchoe, Stapelia, Sansevieria), Iris, Lilium, Paeonia, Rosa, Syringa, as well as flora of Asia and the Far East, Kazakhstan, Europe, the Americas, and medicinal plants and conifers such as Podocarpus.