barrett] THE MOST USEFUL HOUSE PLANT 15 



Of the foliage plants mention may be made of the Kentia Palm, 

 Aspidistra, Dracena (fairly successful) and Pandanus or Screw 

 Pine. Among the trailing plants, English Ivy, Tradescantia 

 and Trailing Asparagus are always successful. 



If the beginner in outdoor plant culture will make a small 

 selection from the plants mentioned and study their needs and 

 reactions he will readily accumulate the fund of experience which 

 will guarantee success and pleasure in his pastime. 



The Most Useful House Plant 



Mary F. Barrett 



Bloomfield, New Jersey 



What is our most useful house plant ? I will tell you some facts 

 concerning it and you will be able to guess in a moment to what I 

 refer. 



This plant is so small that we can not discern the individuals, 

 although we often see collections of them. It grows wild; but 

 if we want to propagate it in our homes, and most of us do, we 

 buy it in quantity usually at a grocery store. We purchase 

 thousands at a time; but the price is only two cents. Its color 

 is a grayish-white, not green, because it is a fungus; and it has 

 none of the parts which we associate with house-plants. It can 

 not be said to be in the least ornamental. 



We take the best of care of it, but in the kitchen instead of the 

 conservatory; keeping it first in the ice-box and then, when we 

 want it to grow, in a warm room. We give it no light, but plenty 

 of warm water and also sugar, an unusual diet for a house plant. 

 Its life after it starts to grow is very brief, less than twenty- 

 four hours. In fact we put it to a violent death by subjecting it 

 to intense heat. Then we eat it, along with other things, and 

 by that time we have so far forgotten its existence that if we taste 

 it we complain. 



A popular commercial brand of the plant is that prepared by 

 the Fleischmann Company. If you break off a bit of their square 

 cake, crush it in a little water and examine it under a miscoscope 

 which magnifies it several hundred times, you will find two 

 different kinds of oval or roundish bodies. The one with striations 

 like a clam shell is a starch grain; the other, which is clear or has 



