IVY 43 



more value for the various trade purposes that were 

 then suggested. 



The hop, alike in its wild and cultivated state, is 

 greatly exposed to damage from mildew, and the assaults 

 of insects. 



IVY (Hedera Helix) 



We so naturally associate the idea of fruit-bearing 

 with Autumn that it is somewhat of a shock to find 

 that the two things, after all, are not at all necessarily 

 identical in point of time. Fruiting follows naturally upon 

 flowering, and at no great interval from it ; the sequence 

 is, indeed, practically immediate, though the earlier stages 

 of transition from fully-developed flowers to fully-matured 

 fruit may not be visible. If, therefore, a plant has its 

 flowering season in October, its fruit will certainly not 

 be developed either in the preceding or the succeeding 

 September, but will assuredly be one of those gifts of 

 Nature that we value the more because they come in the 

 dark chilly days of frost-bound Winter, when so much 

 of floral interest is of necessity lost to us. Such a plant 

 is the Ivy. In like manner the hyacinth throws up 

 in the woods its quaint three-lobed seed-chambers, the 

 primrose its delicate five-pointed capsules, long ere the 

 swarthy reapers cut the golden wheat, and each has 

 passed away from our ken months before we, armed 

 with hooked stick and provided with a goodly basket, 

 set out to gather in our special harvest of luscious black- 

 berries or of well-filled nuts in the shortening days of 

 September. 



Ivy in the hands of the gardeners has been developed 



