129 



HARDY EVERGREEN FLOWERING SHRUBS. 



EMBOTHRIUM COCCINETJM. 



The beautiful shrubs of the genus Embo- 

 thrium have hitherto been cultivated in gi'een- 

 houses only, being considered too tender for 

 permanent positions out of doors ; but cocci- 

 neum having stood five successive winters 

 quite unprotected in the open air of Devon- 

 shire, may now be classed among our hardy 

 flowering shrubs, its preservation, during 

 winter, in less favoured districts, requiring 

 only such ordinary precautions as the use of 



ever, comparatively hardy, and further trials 

 of it in exposed situations will doubtless 

 prove it to be quite so, its native sites, in 

 Terra del Fuego and the Straits of Magellan, 

 having much in common with our own 

 climate, both as to latitude and seasonal 

 changes. It wa3 introduced to this country 

 by Messrs, Veitch, of Exeter, through their 

 collector, Mr. "William Lobb. In habit it is 

 all that can be desired for an effective out- 



a little matting or hay-bands during severe 

 weather. The Proteads, to which Emboth- 

 riurn is closely related, are a large family of 

 evergreen greenhouse shrubs, mostly from 

 the Cape of Good Hope. They are most 

 useful as furnishing plants for conservatories, 

 and all of them are easy of culture in fibry 

 loam and peat, with an admixture of char- 

 coal and freestone in lumps, but they will 

 not bear a lower temperature than 38 degs. 

 in winter. Embothrium coccineum is, how- 



door evergreen, and would be in every way 

 worthy of a good place in a collection of 

 shrubs, were it not also a most profuse bloomer, 

 the plant bearing, during the summer, nume- 

 rous bold racemes of a dazzling scarlet colour. 

 When Messrs. Veitch exhibited it at one of 

 the garden meetings of the Horticultural 

 Society, it created no little sensation, both 

 for its novelty as a flowering shrub, and the 

 beautiful maimer in which the specimen was 

 grown and flowered. It then took a prize, 



