JULY. 147 



Carmine pencilled streaks. It will answer in a 

 warm border. 



NERVIUM SPLENDENS 



Is a charming green-house plant, bearing panicles 

 of flowers, each as large and as double as a small 

 Rose or Carnation, and resembling the latter in 

 shape : it flowers during the greater part of the sea- 

 son, but requires a glass-heat to perfect its beauty. 



SENSITIVE PLANT. 



"If you offer to handle this sensitive plant, she immediately takes 

 an alarm; hastily contracts her fibres; and, like a person under 

 apprehension of violence, withdraws from your finger in a kind of 

 precipitate disorder." 



The Mimosa sensitiva, or Sensitive "Plant, is a 

 native of Brazil, and cultivated in our green-houses 

 on account of its well-known property of closing its 

 leaves, and dropping the leaf-stems, when touched 

 or removed from the light. It is well known that 

 this motion depends on a circular swelling at the 

 base of each leaf-stem, which will, if cut away at 

 the under part, prevent the leaf from erecting itself, 

 and if the contrary side is removed, the leaf cannot 

 fall down. The seed of these plants should be sown 

 on a hot-bed in April, and when sufficiently grown, 

 potted in a compost of equal parts of peat and gar- 

 den mould, and placed in the warmest part of the 

 green-house or bark frame. They blossom in July 

 and August. 



