May.'] HOT-HOUSE OF REPOTTING, &c. 171 



pruned back to within a few eyes of the preceding year's 

 wood. (Soil No. 13.) 



Musa, (Plantain tree,) contains eight species, and is 

 greatly esteemed in the East and West Indies for the 

 luscious sweet flavour of its fruit, which can be converted 

 into every delicacy in the domestic cookery of the country. 

 M. paradisiaca is the true plantain tree, has a soft herbace- 

 ous stalk, fifteen or twenty feet high, with leaves from five 

 to seven feet long, and about two feet wide. M. sapientum 

 is the true banana tree ; habit and character same as the 

 former, except it has a spotted stem, and the male flowers 

 are deciduous. The pulp of the fruit is softer, and the 

 taste more luscious. M. roscicea, M. coccinea, and M. chi- 

 nensis, are more esteemed in artificial cultivation for their 

 flowers, and for being smaller in growth. M. Cavendishii 

 produces immense clusters of ripe and well-flavoured fruit, 

 plants only four feet and a half high ; will yearly produce 

 about eighty pounds. M. ddcca is another dwarf species, 

 and in 1838 ripened a cluster of fruit in the Royal Bo- 

 tanic Gardens of Edinburgh, which weighed fifty pounds. 

 These dwarf Bananas are now being cultivated in Europe 

 expressly for their fruit, which is very delicious when per- 

 fectly ripened. They are Chinese plants, and will soon 

 be introduced into the West India Islands, where they will 

 entirely supplant the large varieties. 



Myrtus Pimenta, or, more properly, Pimenta Vulgdris, 

 is the Jamaica pepper or allspice ; there is no beauty in the 

 flowers the leaves are highly aromatic, and it is a hand- 

 some evergreen. (Soil No. 9.) 



Nepenthes, (Pitcher-plant.) There are two species of 

 this plant. JV. distillatoria is an esteemed and valuable 

 plant in European collections, and we are not aware of 

 there being any in this country, except in Philadelphia. 

 The leaves are lanceolate and sessile ; from their extremity 

 there is a spiral, attached to which are long inflated append- 

 ages that are generally half full of water, which appears to 

 be confined within them by a lid with which the append- 

 ages are surmounted; hence the name of pitcher plant. 

 We have never observed the lids close again when once 

 open. Writers have called it an herbaceous plant, but it 

 is properly a climbing shrub. The pot in which it grows 

 should be covered with moss, and the roots liberally sup- 



