574 



EXOCHORDA. 



THE ENGLISH FLOWER GARDEN. 



poisonous, and are for the most part kept 

 in botanical collections. 



Eurybia. See OLEARIA. 



Eutoca. See PHACELIA. 



EXOCHORDA (Pearl Bush). Beauti- 

 ful summer-leafing, hardy shrubs with 

 pearl-like flower buds ; of easy culture. 

 E. grandiftora is one of the loveliest of 

 hardy shrubs allied to the Spiraeas, but 

 with larger flowers, forming when full 

 grown a rounded bush of about 10 ft. 

 high and as much through. It flowers 

 about the middle of May, just after the 

 foliage unfolds, and affords a charming 

 contrast between tender green leaves 

 and snow-white flowers as large as florins. 

 It likes shelter, and grows best in warm 

 loam, though hardy anywhere. 



E. Alberti has larger leaves borne upon 

 stems of stouter and more rigid habit, and 

 of a brighter reddish-brown. The flowers 

 are clustered in erect spikes, are sessile, 

 of a greenish-white, with the petals 

 rather far apart. Coming from Central 

 Asia it is hardier than the Chinese plant, 

 but does not bloom freely in cold soils. A 

 cross between these two species, known 

 as Alberti macrantha, has great vigour, 

 and is more profuse in its snow-white 

 flowers than either of the parents. 



EXOGONIUM (Jalap Plant). A 

 graceful perennial trailing plant, none 

 more beautiful among climbing plants 

 than E. purga, and of its hardiness 

 there can be little doubt. It has lived 

 for years at Bitton, Gloucestershire, with- 

 out any protection, and each year it has 

 flowered well. It has also grown well 

 at Kew, Fulham, and in the Edinburgh 

 Botanic Gardens. Mr. Ellacombe grows 

 it in a sheltered corner, and provides 

 a tall wire trellis with a spreading 

 top for it to grow up. It does not 

 flower in the lower parts, but the entire 

 top and the pendent shoots become a 

 mass of lovely bloom. If not checked by 

 late spring frosts at Bitton, it comes into 

 blossom early in September, and continues 

 to flower till cut down by frost. It has 

 roundish tubers of variable size, those of 

 mature growth being about as large as an 

 orange and of a dark colour. These are the 

 true Jalap tubers. The plant gets its name 

 from Xalapa, in Mexico, its native region, 

 and is increased by division of tubers. 



FABIANA (False Heath). F. imbri- 

 cata is a pretty shrub of the Potato family, 

 but so much resembling a Heath, that it 

 might well be mistaken for one. It is 

 slender, with evergreen leaves, and in 

 early summer every shoot is wreathed 

 with small white trumpet-shaped flowers. 

 A native of Chili, it is not perfectly 



hardy as a bush except in the southern 

 and western counties, in which it is often 

 a very distinct and beautiful shrub. 



FAGUS (Beech). Not a very large 

 family of trees, but including one of the 

 noblest of all our native beech. It is a great 

 tree in all the countries of Europe, from 

 Northern Greece to Denmark, thriving 

 admirably in soils useless for the oak and 

 other trees, and beautiful in many of 

 our poor chalky soils. It is so often 

 seen in our woodlands that there is no 

 need to advocate its use elsewhere ; 

 a wild tree common in the woodlands and 

 forests in Europe everywhere can have 

 little place in gardens. The varieties 

 of the beech, however, are of the highest 

 garden value as lawn trees, and some of 

 the most beautiful weeping trees in 

 England are those of the weeping form 

 of the beech. The fine character of the 

 pendent beech is that it is not only 

 graceful in a young state, but improves 

 every year of its life, very old trees bein^ 

 picturesque in a high degree. The 

 varieties are almost without end ; every 

 state or chance variegation is given a 

 Latin name, though many of them are 

 worthless. Merely curious and variegated 

 varieties are not worth a place. The fern- 

 leaved variety is one of the best, and the 

 purple beech is the most striking of our 

 coloured trees, and will come true from 

 seed, which is a gain. Even if all the seeds 

 do not come true it does not matter in 

 the least as long as we get some plants 

 of the colour we seek, and in raising 

 trees from seed we always obtain some 

 slight variation. The copper beech is a 

 little paler and more coppery than the 

 old purple beech, and there is a weeping 

 form as well as a dark purple. These 

 dark coloured forms should not be used 

 too freely one to three purple beeches 

 in each parish are ample. Among the 

 best varieties of the European beech are 

 the following : Miltonensis, pendtila, 

 heterophylla, macrophylla, purpurea, pur- 

 purea pendula, purpurea tricolor, Zlatia, 

 and Swat-Magret, a very dark-leaved 

 form. 



Fagus americana (the American 

 beech) is in its own country a forest tree 

 well above 100 ft. high, inhabiting the north- 

 ern regions, as well as westwards and 

 southwards, but the European beech is a 

 so much greater tree, for our climate at 

 least, that less importance is attached 

 to the American sort. As to other species 

 of which there are birch-like evergreen 

 ones as well as summer leafing kinds, such 

 as those inhabiting the antarctic regions 

 and Terra del Fuego, little is known of 



