ON TRELLIS AND TRAILING PLANTS. 



121 



and where a taste for such silent monitors of duty as these stars of 

 the earth are, is greatly to be wished for; yet my little protege's, 

 despite the supposed uselessness of house-plants, claim and obtain 

 something more than a passing notice. 



But it is not my intention to dwell on these elegant and new plants, 

 as much has been already written ; but a few words on another, and 

 that a small family of pretty flowers, admirably adapted to grace the 

 windows of dwellings with their perpetual bloom, and to become the 

 subjects of the careful and tasteful management of the trellis. I allude 

 to the Maurandyas. I well remember, some few years since, the 

 pleasure I enjoyed in seeing the little M. antirrhiniflora, whose pro- 

 fuse flowering covers the luxuriant and twining stems; and when 

 afterwards were introduced to its more delicate corolled sister, M. sem- 

 perflorens, whose roseate bloom is true to its trivial name, I considered 

 it no mean addition to greenhouse or flower border ; but when the 

 superb seedling of Barclay came into notice, whose large deep blue 

 personate blossoms and fair green foliage, and more luxuriant growth, 

 points it out as the most desirable, I only thought that my predilection 

 to the Maurandyas was most happily strengthened by the manner 

 through which we became acquainted. 



As trellis plants, the Maurandyas are peculiarly appropriate. The 

 three species would ornament any one's collection, and amply repay 

 all his efforts to train them into a fanciful form. They are a good 

 companion to the Verbenas, by way of contrast ; and their adaptation 

 to pot culture,— very soon producing flowers, and continuing for weeks 

 and months in beauty, and bearing the scissors or the knife with great 

 chance of improvement to their appearance, — are all concomitant in 

 producing a good effect. Nor do they suffer from occasional neglect, 

 as do many of our most beautiful plants ; for Nature has taught the 

 flexible petiole or leaf-stalk to firmly embrace any object with which it 

 comes in contact ; and the deprivation of water for a period exceeding 

 its usual time of imbibition is not attended with those fatal effects so 

 apparent in many flowers. 



For out-door cultivation, the Maurandyas are admirably adapted to 

 training on pyramidal trellis work, in the centre of a bed composed of 

 the dazzling and prostrate Verbenas. Growing with a rapidity second 

 only to them, the flexible shoots of Maurandya may be made to climb 

 a considerable structure in a few weeks ; and, like its more brilliant 



