DECEMBER. 353 



THE GLOXINIA. 



(Plate 107.) 



With the beauty of the Gloxinia every lover of gay flowers Is 

 justly charmed, and there are few gardens possessed of a hot- 

 house in which several varieties of this useful plant are not to be 

 found ; but these, for the most part, have hitherto been confined 

 to the ordinary drooping flowered hinds. We have now, how- 

 ever, a race, whose beginning was Fytiana, possessed of all the 

 delicacy and brilliancy of colouring of the best of the common 

 Gloxinias, but with flowers erect and regular in form, set like 

 so many vases on slender pedestals, thus displaying to view 

 with great conspicuity the whole of their interior, in which so 

 much of the beauty of the Gloxinia resides. (Jf this upright 

 growing class are the very handsome varieties which we have this 

 month selected for our plate ; they are four of the best, picked 

 out of what were exhibited this year at our great metropolitan 

 shows. Of their beauty as single flowers our artist has given, as 

 indeed he always does, a faithful representation ; but, we need 

 scarcely add, that a correct knowledge of their full value as 

 decorative plants can only be derived from seeing, as we have 

 done, well grown specimens loaded with such flowers rising in 

 thick profusion above their leafy carpet, newly developed, fresh 

 and beautiful from the hand of Nature. 



As regards the cultivation of Gloxinias little need be said, 

 several papers on the subject having already been given in former 

 numbers. Some treat them as hothouse annuals, 1)rinmno; them 

 into blossom about, the beginning of June, from which time they 

 will continue flowering in perfection in a greenhouse, or even in 

 a drawing room, for two or three months ; but it is doubtful if 

 the sorts of which our plate is composed will, managed in this 

 manner, come true to their kinds, and therefore the better way 

 will be not to have recourse to seed, but to grow and increase 

 them exactly like the common kinds. 



Those, however, who take an interest in raising seedlings should 

 sow either early in autumn or in spring; when sown in the 

 winter months the young plants are apt to damp off. In the 

 spring of 1853 an amateur of our acquaintance bought a packet 

 of seed, and by way of encouragement it may perhaps not be 

 uninteresting to record his success with it. It was sown in a 

 Avile pot, and came uj) very thickly. AMien the plants were an 

 inch high a dozen were pricked out in small pots : some were 

 given away ; but those that were kept bloomed in August 

 and September of that yeir, and last year they were truly 

 magnificent. They commenced blossoming in June, and 



NEW SERIES, VOL. V., NO. LX. A A 



