VINES AND CLIMBING PLANTS. 



No one whose rambles have led him through our woods 

 and forests, by field and hedge-row, where our natural vege- 

 tation finds an opportunity to develop itself, — before the axe or 

 the plough of the innovator has had the opportunity to destroy 

 it, — could ever fail to observe the great variety which our wild 

 vines and climbing plants give to every scene, and invest with 

 picturesqueness every by-path and shady lane ; scrambling 

 over walls and fences, over bushes and shrubs, and often 

 hanging in graceful festoons from tree to tree. Nothing has 

 afforded us more gratification in our search after wild plants — 

 nothing oftener charmed us or rivetted our attention, than the 

 common clematis, with its snowy wreaths of flowers twined 

 over every shrub within its reach, or the pretty glycine coil- 

 ing its slender stem around some little bush, and clothing it 

 with its bunches of pea-blossomed flowers. We love the 

 whole tribe of climbing plants, and, as we wish all our readers 

 to admire them too, if they do not already, we devote our 

 present article to a notice of some of the more conspicuous 

 and most worthy of cultivation. 



Nothing adds more to the interest of a beautiful garden 

 than a profusion of vines and climbing plants ; now decorating 

 the handsome arbor at its main entrance — now trained in 

 more systematic order upon a neat trellis, too precise and 

 formal generally to suit us : — now festooning the bare trunk 

 of some tall and branchless tree, or again scrambling in wild- 

 est luxuriance over some fanciful garden seat or rustic arbor, 

 as the style of the garden or its connection with the house 

 and its surroundings may admit of in their construction. In 

 either or all of these places they always form the most at- 

 tractive objects. What richness of bloom does the Wis- 

 taria display in the abundance of its long racemes of lilac 

 flowers, hanging from every twig in countless numbers I 

 And how redolent of beauty the thousand bouquets which 



VOL. XXI. NO. V. 27 



