233 

 ODDS AND ENDS. 



BY THOMAS WILLIAMS, 



Bath Lodge, Orm&kirk. 



AS AYENTTE OP PJE0N1A OPPICINALIS. 



you ever see one ? if not you have missed one of the 

 grandest imaginable sights vegetation can produce. 

 In an old-fashioned farmhouse garden, not far from 

 where I live, this truly noble flower predominates over 

 all other things, having been largely grown by a former 

 proprietor for market purposes. As there is always a ready sale for 

 the blooms of this flower, the present proprietor finding the plants 

 scattered all over the garden, collected them together, and planted 

 them a yard apart systematically on each side of a walk about fifty 

 yards long. Each plant produces from ten to fourteen enormous 

 crimson flowers, each as large as a child's head. This avenue once 

 seen is never to be forgotten ; it seemed to me like an avenue lead- 

 ing to the abode of the gods. We read of green cloth and crimson 

 cloth being spread under the feet of high-born lords and ladies on 

 state occasions, but how contemptibly feeble all these appliances 

 appear compared with this truly " royal road," and a person may 

 almost fancy himself deified by walking along such a path. The 

 Welsh name for this plant is " Blodan Brennin." or the King's 

 Flower, a proper name for so truly a regal plant. I am not advo- 

 cating lines or avenues of this fine thing, but have brought it forward 

 simply to ask, why, in the name of all that is beautiful, is this noble 

 plant confined to cottage and farm gardens ? Why is it not planted 

 by hundreds about every large mansion, and by the thousands in our 

 squares and parks ? What a tropical eftect a clump of about one 

 hundred of these plants would produce. How beneficent is that 

 Providence which, while it gives to the wealthy their parterres and 

 conservatories, permits the cottager to be the custodian and conser- 

 vator of such a plant as this, which, were it a rarity, and introduced 

 for the first time, would almost tempt a man to lay down a coronet 

 to obtain it. 



JAPANESE ASPARAGUS. 



Another very stately and very little known herbaceous plant, 

 though from its magnitude it may be termed an herbaceous tree, 

 is Polygonum Sieboldii, which the Japanese are reported to use 

 in the same way that we do asparagus. This is a plant certain of 

 commanding attention ; its large shield-shaped leaves, like those of 

 a small caladium, are very striking ; its stems, nearly an inch thick, 

 are marbled red, and in autumn it is covered with catkin-like 

 white inflorescence, not unlike Spirece sorlifolia. Perhaps no plant 

 in the temperate regions of the globe grows with more rapidity 

 than this ; early in April there is nothing to be seen of it, 

 before the middle of May you have a plant of tree-like habit, 

 from five to seven feet high, with from ten to twenty stems, hand- 



