92 Evergreen covert 



or much trouble may arise from stock eating it. It is 

 naturally common in some districts, and cannot be ex- 

 cluded from our plantings, and the safest way with it, 

 perhaps, is to put it in a dense group towards the centre 

 of a wood, where its shelter will be very welcome to 

 birds in winter. 



The Palmate Bamboo (Bambusa palmata). I first had 

 this in a moist wood in rather black soil, and then took 

 a fancy to moving it to the water-side, and although we 

 took the plant out carefully from the wood, a number of 

 roots remained, and from these arose the most graceful 

 colony of plants I ever saw, so fresh and fine a green in 

 the middle of winter as almost to make one forget the 

 season ; the shoots are handsome enough to cut for the 

 house in winter, the growth close, and the form good. 

 It was also quite free by the water-side, where its fine 

 reed-like habit goes well with Reeds and Willows. 



The Japanese Bamboo (B. Metake). This is very free 

 and hardy in varied conditions, and a fine covert plant. 

 It has long been cultivated in Surrey nurseries, and is 

 easy to secure ; it increases quite freely either in wood- 

 land or near water. Some of the older Bamboos, such 

 as used to be grown first of all, as B.falcata so well in 

 the south of Ireland at Fota, give tall covert of a graceful 

 sort, but not so good as these. 



A beautiful evergreen covert plant. We often see 

 lists given in catalogues of covert plants, like Privets, 

 which are only of slight beauty and value, and inferior 

 to our native Briers, Bracken, and Furze as covert plants. 

 There is one bush, however, not always known as 

 a native be it said, which makes the most beautiful of 

 all evergreen covert, especially in sandy, chalky, stony, 

 or dry gravelly soils, where few other things will thrive. 



