VILLA GARDENS WEST OF FUNCHAL 35 



Santa Luzia ravine. Whether this is really the case 

 I feel doubtful, as Mr. Lowe, in his " Flora of 

 Madeira," quotes it as one of the plants which has 

 become naturalized, though probably originally 

 introduced. Growing on the cliffs the flowers 

 show to great advantage, standing out in sharp 

 contrast to the deep blue sea below, but it is a 

 great ornament wherever it grows, whether in 

 clusters overhanging a wall where its rosettes of 

 leaves overlap each other in thick tufts in endless 

 succession till there seems no reason why they 

 should ever stop, or clothing the rocky ground on 

 the hillside among the pine-trees. 



At the same season the Franzeria artemesioides, 

 or daisy-trees, as they are commonly called, are in 

 full beauty. The best method of treating these 

 trees is to cut them back when they have done 

 flowering, as the large clusters of daisy-like flowers 

 appear on the long shoots of young wood. When 

 their flowering season is over, they lose their large 

 grey-green leaves, so it is lucky that the tree can be 

 so treated, or the long bare branches would make 

 them unsightly at other seasons. The hedges and 

 bushes of Plumbago capensis attain to mammoth 

 proportions when they can escape the attention of 

 the gardener's ruthless shears, and are laden with 



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