212 OBSERVATIONS UPON THUNBERGIA (?) FASTUOSA. 



ARTICLE IV. 



OBSERVATIONS UPON THUNBERGIA (?) FASTUOSA. 



BY CH. J. OF MR. VAN HOUTTE's NURSERY, GHENT. 



The inconvenience is vexatiously felt by most amateurs of being 

 under the necessity of shading those plants which remain under glass 

 during the summer season ; their protections being mostly unsightly, 

 formed of clownish and nasty canvass, laths, mats, &c. To avoid the 

 disagreeable effect of such protections, the loss of time resulting from 

 their arrangement in the morning and removing them in the evening, 

 various climbers are planted to protect the plants under them from 

 the sun, by the interlacing of their long leafy branches. 



But no plant has, up to the present time, answered the above ob- 

 ject ; the Passion-flowers, the Bignonias, &c, grow slowly enough, 

 or even languish ; and besides too long a lapse of time (several years) 

 would pass over, before the green or hot-houses would be properly 

 furnished, or their branches be capable of casting the necessary shade. 



At this moment the problem is completely resolved by experience. 



A plant recently introduced from Mexico amply suffices for all 

 the exigencies of amateurs. Its vegetation is of such extraordinary 

 luxuriance that in a few months only (six or seven), its branches 

 attain a length of more than 30 feet, without counting numerous side 

 shoots, which reach nearly the same extension. The diameter of its 

 leaves is more than six or eight inches, and they garnish the whole 

 length of the shoots. Such a plant, put in full ground, in a corner of an 

 ordinary hothouse, will easily cover all glazed surface in less than a 

 year, and save the amateur from having to employ other means to 

 protect his plants against the devouring influence of the sun's rays. 

 Even during this first year pruning will be often necessary, in order 

 to diminish the obscurity produced by the multiplicity of intermingled 

 branches and of large leaves of our Thunbergia. 



These few words will suffice to make the utility of the new plant 

 we announce understood. We must say a word of the beauty of its 

 habitus. 



At this point of view, it fears little rivalry. Its cylindric branches, 

 hollow within, as thick as a finger, are very glabrous, smooth, of a 

 deep purple, very finely spotted with green. Its leaves are oppo- 





