84 



THE FLORIST. 



our vast inferiority, and the nothingness of our flower-gardens. We 

 have Pelargoniums, but tlie)^ are poor affairs ; and the same may be 

 said of TuHps, Ranunculuses, and Dahlias. We sometimes have 

 wondered how it is that every flower and flowering-plant here should 

 be represented by the meanest individual of its family ; but this is 

 doubtless owing to the hardihood of the more inferior sorts, whose 

 constitutions enable them to endure a voyage over half the globe 

 better than the finer kinds. Nature here has herself been sparing 

 of flowers ; they have not been strewed so lavishly over this country 

 as over some ; it is a plain pastoral country, rich in grasses, the 

 varieties of which are innumerable. 



But I may be hasty in saying that we are not rich in flowering- 

 plants ; for I beheve that, taking the country through, and particularly 

 amid the most wild and woody parts, many singular shrubs might be 

 found. I have myself travelled little ; but in the scrubby wilderness 

 country I have passed through, I have frequently met with plants 

 which I should have liked to introduce into my garden. I have, 

 however, mostly found this diflficult to accomplish, for the plant being 

 in flower, I could get no seed ; and being two or three days' journey 

 from home, roots were too troublesome to carry. Grov^^ing among 

 the Gum scrub may be seen profusions of a dwarfish tuberous-rooted 

 Pelargonium ; and then we come among innumerable bushes of the 

 Correa, of which I have seen three varieties. Two of these are in 

 our neighbourhood : one of them very much resembles the plate in 

 the Florist of 1848, but it is not quite so brilliant ; the other has an 

 erect blossom of similar colour, but the habit of the plant is low and 



rather crawling. In the blos- 

 soms of both, the stamens are 

 much more elongated than in the 

 figures alluded to. The accom- 

 panying sketch represents both 

 of them, they being now in blos- 

 som in my garden. I will try to 

 save some seed of them. Of the 

 pendent -blossomed one I may 

 say, of a dozen plants which we 

 brought from the top of Mount 

 Barker no two are exactly alike ; 

 some of the flowers are much 

 more curled in the lip than others, 

 some are shorter in the tube, 

 others longer, and some are much disposed to be de- 

 formed, thus ; so that 1 suspect it is a flower which a 

 Florist would find very tractable in the way of pro- 

 ducing varieties. The leaf of the plant is highly aro- 

 matic. The native habitat of these Correas being 

 nearly close at home, we have been able readily to 

 get them into our garden ; but I have seen other plants and shrubs 

 much farther off", which 1 should have liked to have obtained for 

 cultivation. I believe there is no plant of the Rose genus in the 



