illNTS ON ACCLIMATING TENDER PLANTS* 



m 



its fruit in a comparatively cold summer, after which we 

 know that the hardest frost has no power to injure the seed, 

 though exposed in the open air to its severest influence ; but a 

 perennial has to encounter frosts with its buds and annual 

 shoots, that have sometimes been so severe with usj as to rend 

 asunder the trunks of our indigenous forest trees. 



It is probable that wheat, our principal food at present, Wheat* 

 did not bring its seed to perfection in this climate, till 

 hardened to it by repeated sowings; a few years ago some 

 spring wheat from Guzerat was sown with barley, in a well 

 cultivated field : it rose, eared, and blossomed, with a healthy 

 appearance, but many ears were when ripe wholly without 

 corn, and few brought more than three or four grains to 

 perfection. 



In the year 1791, some seeds of zizania aquatica were Water oaft 

 procured from Canada, and sown in a pond at Spring Grove, 

 near Hounslow ; it grew, and produced strong plants, whic^h 

 ripened their seeds; those seeds vegetated in the succeeding 

 spring, but the plants they produced were weak, slender, not 

 half so tall as those of the first generation, and grew in the 

 shallowest water only; the seeds of these plants produced 

 others the next year sensibly stronger than their parents of 

 the second year. 



In this manner the plants proceeded, springing up every Gradually ac- 

 year from the seeds of the preceding one,^ every one becom- cli"^^*^^* 

 ing visibly stronger and larger, and rising from deeper parts 

 of the pond, till the last year, 1804-, when several of the 

 plants were six feet in height, and the whole pond was in 

 every part covered with them as thick as wheat grows on a 

 well managed field. 



Here we have an experiment which proves, that an annual till perfectly 

 plant, scarce able to endure the ungenial summer of England, ^g|°g°"^ "^ ^^ 

 has become, in fourteen generations, as strong and as vigo- 

 rous as our indigenous plants are, and as perfect in all its 

 parts as in its native climate. 



Some of our most common flowering shrubs have been long Bay ti«e. 

 introduced into the gardens; the bay tree has been cultivated 

 more than two ctjnturies ; it is mcRtioned by Tusser, in the 



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