i88i.] BOTANY FOR GARDENERS. 415 



shades. Beds of one colour of Pentstemons may be planted with an 

 undergrowth of such dwarf-growing plants as Koniga variegata, mix- 

 tures of Polemonium variegatum and Blue Lobelia, or many other plants. 

 The best Pentstemons for this purpose will be found in any or all of 

 the undernoted sorts : Mrs Sutherland Walker, and Mr Pi. Dean, both 

 red, may be used together; Junius, Brutus, Lady Boswell, Miss C. 

 Taylor, and Champion, are all purplish crimson in hue, and may be 

 used together ; Egerton Hubbard and Abbot's Meadows are dark purple, 

 and do together ; Eclipse, light rose ; James Harknell, deep rose; Can- 

 didate, crimson ; Inimitable, purplish crimson, and Master Fox Tarbet, 

 — are all well adapted for the above purpose. All are dark sorts, as 

 Pentstemons which are light in colours are not effective as decorative 

 subjects. We shall have our stock rooted by the time this appears, but 

 there is yet plenty of time to strike plants before winter sets in. I 

 find that weakly plants never make up ground sufficiently to be of 

 any value, even when the cultivation is good. To get really fine plants, 

 with six to a dozen strong spikes to each, it is advisable to pot them 

 up in spring. Their value is not nearly sufiiciently recognised. 



The dot style of planting all these will be found, on the whole, more 

 attractive in most gardens than that of massing them closely together. 

 If the garden is very large, it is, of course, possible to take liberties 

 and make capital hits, which in ordinary-sized gardens prove a blunder 

 not to be repeated. And we northern gardeners have within our reach 

 a class of plants which in the south cannot be used with anything like 

 the same effect. We fail with many subtropical plants, such as Cannas, 

 Castor-oil plants, and others of massive leafage. But these hardy 

 plants, are better adapted to our northern climate than they are to 

 that of the south, and give to our flower-gardens a feature which, with 

 the aid of such massive plants as Tritomas, Sun-flowers, herbaceous 

 and annual Salvias, and other hardy late-flowering plants, relieve the 

 dumpiness which has been too much the order of the day for many 

 years. K P. B. 



BOTANY FOR GARDENERS. 



NO. IX. — SEEDS. 



The seed is the grand provision for continuing and multiplying 

 vegetable species, and presents a considerable analogy in the vascular 

 classes of the vegetable kingdom to an egg in the oviparous classes of 

 the animal. Every seed, if properly fertilised, contains the embryo or 

 rudiment of a future plant, and comprises an ample and most beautiful 

 provision for its protection during dormancy, and for arousing and 

 feeding it at the time of germination. 



In some cases the embryo occupies the whole of the interior ; and 

 in some cases it is so small as to be minute ; and again it is altogether 

 absent. In the two former cases the seed is termed albuminous : the 



