COMBRETUMS. 165 
The following instance shows a practical application of the theory 
propounded in the foregoing remarks. Amongst a miscellaneous col- 
lection of hothouse plants, the potting and superintendence of which 
was under the writer’s charge in July, 1847, was a strong plant, 
tolerably well branched, of Combretum purpureum, in a half dormant 
state, within a pot of eleven inches in width. It was freely divested of 
its exhausted soil, preserving with care the straggling main roots, and 
small amount of young fibres, and thus re-potted with the sole inten- 
tion of re-accumulating an amount of vigour equal, if possible, to the 
mean strength of its stems, by placing it within a pot of fourteen inches 
diameter, having about two inches of progressively coarse bottom 
drainage, over which was placed a distinct and heavy strata or layer of 
knobby portions of dried peat, well pressed, and using nearly equal 
parts of friable, sandy, turfy loam, and well-decayed turfy heath- 
mould. 
The plant was then placed upon the surface of a newly made vinery 
tan-pit for a few weeks, until symptoms of vigorous growth appeared, 
when it was half-plunged in the same position, and, as it progressed, it 
was three-quarters plunged, with an inverted dish placed beneath the 
pot. ‘The temperature of the house was, in a great degree, maintained 
to suit the plants within it, varying from 65° to 80° by day, and 50° 
to 60° by night. The most material points of management were, with 
regard to ventilation, as early an admission of air as the external 
atmosphere would permit, thereby admitting of an early removal, and 
closing with a high, moist, genial temperature. With this treatment, 
the growth became remarkably vigorous, respectively from twelve to 
eighteen inches in length, while, as it attained maturity, the pot was 
eradually re-lifted to the surface, and the plant remained in the same 
house throughout the autumn and following winter, under a tempera- 
ture of 50° to 60°, which appeared just sufficient to enable it to retain 
its foliage until the summer of 1848 ; when the matured growth of the 
previous summer and autumn, on being exposed'to a genial stove-heat, 
expanded from its elongated axillary leaf-buds, fine large splendid 
racemes of bloom, one of which was nearly two feet long and eighteen 
inches wide; and, after remaining an object of extreme beauty for 
some time, it formed in July one of the large premium-collection of 
plants at the great Horticultural Exhibition in York. 
The interest and merits of this species is too generally well known 
to need any further eulogium upon its attractive features, and as it so 
seldom appears amongst the competition groups at the great metro- 
politan fétes, for the reasons previously given, the evidence now offered 
proves that where size and vigour of growth is present, aided by a tem- 
perature equal to what its natural habit demands, it may, by suitable 
management, appear as one of the most beautiful and gorgeous objects 
yet introduced. One motive alone remains to test its capabilities. 
Were special premiums offered for the finest productions, it would ere 
long be placed in the very highest rank of splendid flowering exotic 
shrubs. ‘The plant above referred to was trained upon a flat fan-shaped 
wooden trellis, about two and a half feet in height, 
