does not insist on it, and its foliage is at the best in Autumn and Winter, 

 Winter ; in fact the only time when it looks shabby is after a Bamboos 

 course of easterly winds in Spring. It sends up suckers very 

 freely, and in some shrubberies it has a tendency to become 

 a nuisance on this account, like the Polygonum. One fault it 

 has in common with all Bamboos, that occasionally (though 

 fortunately not often) it produces flowers something like dirty- 

 looking Oats, and when it flowers it dies. I do not remember 

 observing this phenomenon before last year, when in my father's 

 garden at Aldenham, Herts, we lost a large mass of Metake 

 about 15 feet high by 20 feet round, and about fifteen years 

 old, from this cause. It flowered all over, not merely on the 

 strong canes but on every tiny shoot, and this year every particle 

 is stone-dead, nor has it, as I hoped it might, shot up again from 

 the roots. 



This Summer also I have, to my grief, detected Pbyllostacbys 

 Casttllonis and another rare Bamboo in flower, so I fear that I 

 shall lose them too, although I have tried the experiment of at 

 once cutting them to the ground in hopes that I may be in time 

 before the exhaustion caused by flowering has reached a fatal point. 



The Sea Buckthorn (Hippophae rhamnoldes] looks very well 

 in Autumn if planted in a mass, but being dioecious it is 

 necessary to have male plants intermingled in the proportion of 

 about one to six ; when this is done the females berry profusely 

 and the bright orange fruit contrasts admirably with the silver- 

 grey foliage, having also the advantage, from the gardener's 

 point of view, of being unpalatable to birds. It is often 

 supposed that this plant requires sea air, but though the 

 seaside is its home it will do perfectly well inland, and on soils 

 so diverse as chalk and London clay. 



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