8 ASPARAGUS 
house plant it has exceeded expectations, as it stands 
dry atmosphere better than the older kinds of orna- 
mental asparagus, and is not particular as to any 
special position. It delights in a well-enriched soil, 
rather light in composition, with plenty of drainage, 
and grows very rapidly. Itis decidedly pretty when 
in bloom, its little flowers being pure white on short 
racemes, and the anthers are of a bright orange color. 
Fig. 3 gives a good idea of its graceful habit. 
A. falcatus.—One of the most striking twining 
plants for a large, temperate house. At the Kew 
Gardens, in London, England, is an enormous speci- 
men of this species which is trained against the north- 
ern staircase, where it has formed a perfect thicket 
two yards through and twenty-five feet high, of long, 
rope-like, intertwining, spinous, fawn-colored stems, 
some of them fully fifty feet long, and clothed with 
wiry, woody branches, bearing whorls of leaves from 
two to three inches long and nearly one-fourth of an 
inch wide, falcate and bright green. The young stems 
are thick and succulent and gray-green, mottled with 
brown. For large conservatories, and particularly in 
moist, shady corners, where ordinary climbers will 
not thrive, this is an ideal plant. It is a native of 
the tropics of Asia and Africa, as well as the Cape. 
A. laricinus (Fig. 4).—This handsome species 
has been in the Kew collection at least twenty years. 
It is grown in the succulent house, where, from a 
vigorous root system, it sends up annual stout succu- 
lent shoots, which grow to a length of about twelve 
feet, and when fully developed are decidedly orna- 
