ON THE EXPOSURE OF PLANTS. 125 



ARTICLE III. 



REMARKS MADE ON THE EFFECTS OF SITUATION AND 

 EXPOSURE ON DIFFERENT KINDS OF PLANTS DURING 

 WINTER. 



BY A NOBl.EMAN's GARDENER IN YORKSHIRE. 



As by far the greater number of plants cultivated in this country are 

 exotics, we find they are variously affected by the changeable weather 

 of our climate, as well as by the attending circumstances of the 

 situations they are destined to occupy. Our knowledge, acquired by 

 experience, of the constitution of foreign plants, has supplied us with 

 rules for our guidance in the distribution of them. If we happen to 

 be acquainted with the native habitat of a plant, we can judge pretty 

 accurately what place it is most likely to thrive in with us. Tropical 

 plants, for instance, we place in the stove, or conservatory ; Austra- 

 lian, South African, Chinese, and South European, in the green- 

 house; and those from the northern parts of Asia, Europe, and 

 America, anywhere in the open air where we may have occasion for 

 them, or which we may think best adapted for them. This is a 

 very natural way of proceeding; but we are not always right in its 

 application ; some tropical plants are killed by placing and keeping 

 them in the stove ; because it is not so much the latitude whence 

 they have been brought, as it is the elevation of their habitat above 

 the level of the sea which determines their hardiness. Many plants 

 are debilitated by confinement in the greenhouse, and very many 

 extra-tropical plants are lost from being placed in what is considered 

 the warmest or most sheltered situation. 



These errors are occasioned either by a want of experience res- 

 pecting the constitution of the plant, or from inattention to the 

 extreme change of temperature to which it is exposed in its new 

 place, or from ignorance that situation and exposure change the con- 

 stitution of plants to such a degree that, while one is perfectly hardy 

 if nursed on a northern aspect, another of the same kind shall be so 

 tender and vulnerable on a southern exposure, that it dies, or is cut 

 down to (he ground, under the slightest frost. 



Want of experience concerning the constitution of a newly im- 

 ported plant may be said to be an excusable want of judgement; 

 because we have no means of knowing without experience, there 



