CyanopkyllujH Magnljicti^n. 197 



" advantages over its spring-planted neighbor ; but it may be doubted 

 if any one, not familiar with the subject, could imagine so great a 

 diflerence as occurs in reality." 



CYANOPHYLLUM MAGNIFICUM. 



By "Ellerslie." 



No doubt a fevs^ hints on the propagation and cultivation of this 

 magnificent foliage plant will be interesting to many of your readers. 

 Some propagate this plant by taking the head of the plant, others by 

 cutting up the old stem into eyes, as we would grape vines ; in either 

 case, one plant is destroyed. I prefer cutting the plant down to within 

 six or eight inches of the pot, and placing it in a warm house to break, 

 which it soon will, if plunged in a little bottom heat, say sixty or 

 seventy. When these have grown six or eight inches, take off with a 

 little peel, insert into a pint pot with any sort of sharp sand, place in 

 a bottom heat of seventy-five to eighty. In about six or eight weeks 

 they will be rooted, if covered with a bell glass, which must be wiped 

 every morning. Now, the next thing to be done is to grow this plant 

 into a beautiful specimen, which we rarely see, it being so subject to 

 all sorts of insects. 



Your plant is now rooted : put into a quart pot with three parts turfy 

 loam, a little leaf mould, and rotten cow manure, with a little sprin- 

 kling of rough bone, and as the plant fills the pot with roots, put into a 

 larger size from time to time, with stronger compost, say a good hand- 

 ful of rotten manure instead of so many crocks. Keep in a warm, 

 moist stove at a temperature of from sixty to eighty. This plant must 

 have rich compost, as it is as gross a feeder as a tobacco plant ; and 

 as a remedy for insects, I occasionally water with tobacco water, which 

 is carried up by the organs of the plant, and no insect or scale seems to 

 touch it. I have one of those fine plants of eleven months from the 

 cutting pot, which is five feet in height, with leaves three feet long and 

 twenty inches in width, with nine set of leaves, and hanging gracefully, 

 and spreading to five feet in diameter ; and no insect wishes to look at it. 



