SPRING. /)9 



because it was a native plant. But what must be said 

 about the lovely white convolvulus 1 



" The cumbrous bind-weed, with its wreaths and bells." 

 Alas, that it should be so, but there is not a more destruc- 

 tive plant in a garden, and hardly one more beautiful. It 

 was originally brought into our garden many a year ago, 

 planted and provided with stakes to climb on, and it was 

 not discovered for some time that it was secretly pushing 

 its roots through a neighbouring strawberry bed up to- 

 wards a wall, where it festooned the fruit trees with its 

 garlands of pointed leaves and snowy bells. There was no 

 possibility of eradicating it, although the strawberry bed 

 was dug up and the original root cast out ; but some of its 

 roots are still entwined with those of the fruit trees, and 

 year after year -the plant comes up. Undeterred by this, 

 and partly misled by its botanical name, sepiitm, which 

 signifies belonging to a hedge, some small portions of this 

 plant were put in beside a hawthorn hedge which divided 

 a strip of vegetable ground from the garden, under the 

 idea that it would climb amongst the hedge and remain 

 there. Again, however, the same insidious process com- 

 menced ; it crept underground undiscovered till it reached 

 a wall covered with currant bushes, and there, and also in 

 the intervening strip of ground, it flourished, choking the 

 bushes, and well meriting the epithet, " the cumbrous bind- 

 weed." Yet its beauty is great, both in its graceful man- 

 ner of growth and its pure white bells ; if it would only 

 keep its own place, what a pretty addition it would be to 

 our garden flowers. 



