128 ON TRKLLIS AND TRAILING PLANTS. 



companions, too, a considerable frost is requisite to overcome its pro- 

 pensity to flower. Winter, even in the first days of December, has 

 been known to overtake M. Barclayana, so unwilling was it to yield 

 to that gloomy monarch a triumph of the seasons which Flora 

 assumes. 



I presume that some reader may smile at my enthusiastic sugges- 

 tion to pay some regard to that little weed which daringly and fear- 

 lessly hangs its tiny corollas of purple from many a high battlement 

 and mouldering church-tower in Old England, — the thread-like 

 stemmed Linaria cymbalaria; but, despite of expected ridicule, 

 I venture to declare that, properly grown in the form of a trained or 

 trailing plant, it would find many admirers. I never see it in a 

 greenhouse, during the winter months, without a passing admiration ; 

 and, for my own part, candidly confess my preference of it to many a 

 new and rare tropical exotic, extolled and valued because new and 

 rare. Like the other species of the genus Antirrhinum, to which it 

 formerly belonged, the present is peculiarly a plant for scanty nourish- 

 ment and drought. In the upright fissure of a wall I have noticed 

 an elegant mass of its small leaves and smaller flowers where scarcely 

 a moss would find subsistence. Time was when the thread-like 

 stolones of Saxifraga sarmentosa, commonly known under the false 

 appellation of Otaheite plant, might be seen pendent from almost 

 every casement, and no mean appearance did it afford ; but it falls to 

 the lot of vegetables, as of humanity, that fashion reigns among their 

 ranks; and, in consequence, the natural pendent development of many 

 is banished, to give place to the more constrained style of training. 

 With many plants this is a decided improvement ; for example, with 

 the Verbenas and Petunias ; but I think that a happy combination of 

 both should prevail. 



Who, for instance, has not admired the almost perennial beauty of 

 Lobelia bicolor, or the careless manner of Aster tenella, or the pretty 

 mode of Lantana Selowii ? Russelia juncea, though beautiful when 

 trained, is not inelegant when in a trailing state ; and even the minute 

 Linaria cymbalaria, or ivy-leaved snap-dragon, is not an unworthy 

 though humble companion, and deserving a quiet corner of the shelf 

 appropriated to creeping plants. The free, unrestrained, natural 

 elegance of plants is, to the eye of refined taste, always the most 

 attractive. Who would think of tying into a constrained position the 



