THE FLORAL WORLD AND GARDEN GUIDE. 321 



VAEIEGATED IVIES. 



(Illustrated toith a Coloured Plate.) 



N the Floral "World of December, 1869, our readers 

 were invited to admire a few of the more distinctive 

 varieties of ivies in our collection. At the same time, 

 the paper on the classification and. nomenclature of 

 ivies read before the Linusean Society was reproduced, 

 in order to afford to those who were interested in the subject an 

 opportunity of considering the nature of the reformation in botanical 

 nomenclature, it was (and still is) our anxious desire to promote. 

 Having transferred to Mr. C Turner, of the Royal Nurseries, Slough, 

 the whole of our large specimens and stock plants of fifty distinct 

 varieties, which in 1869 constituted the Stoke Newington collec- 

 tion, the horticultural public have been enabled to obtain (by the 

 simple process of purchase) any of the beautiful ivies that we have 

 described and figured in this and in other works. But we had not 

 done with ivies when Mr. Turner carried away some two hundred 

 of our finest plants, and now our collection, though deficient in large 

 specimen plants, which can only be produced by years of labour, is 

 far more extensive than ever, and we might certainly count amongst 

 them two hundred varieties at the very least. It is not our intention 

 to trouble our readers with particulars of all these, for a large pro- 

 portion, of them will never receive garden names, much less be 

 honoured with publicity. Our object is to promote the cultivation 

 of a peculiarly useful class of ornamental plants, the beauties and 

 uses of which are as yet comparatively unknown. The accompanying 

 plate represents named ivies that may be purchased in the ordinary 

 way, and are therefore available to all, irrespective of our own 

 private collection, which will probably furnish to the nursery gar- 

 dens many additional beauties as time speeds along. It will occur 

 to some, perhaps, that the leaves represented in the plate are too 

 highly coloured; but the truth is, the best drawing, however faith- 

 fully reproduced, must fall far short of the splendour of the orio-inal. 

 The large leaf in the centre, for example, which represents the 

 Canescens of the list published in the Floral World of December 

 1869, and the Algeriensis fol. var. of the nursery catalogues, is so 

 exquisitely variegated that the living leaf appears to be bedewed 

 with an infinitesimal film of hoar frost, and the smaller leaves of 

 the marginata series, that are edged and flecked with a curious shade 

 of red, are far more richly coloured than it is possible to indicate in 

 a printed picture. The delicate shade of pink mixing with stripes 

 and dots of brilliant carmine, which appear in the leaves of many 

 of the smaller variegated ivies in the autumn, render them delight- 

 fully attractive as conservatory plants, although small -and large 

 alike, green* and variegated alike, never attain to such perfection 

 under pot culture as they do when planted out on walls facino- 

 north. 



Now that the flower-beds are empty and the borders bare, some idea 



YOL. VI. NO. XI. 21 



