266 AGRICULTURE AND FORESTRY. 



lar plant-maiming, which is usually practised on the Prunus Mume. 

 Young and blooming shoots from stumps of 30 to 100 cm. height 

 are wound about them, or bent over them umbrella fashion. Often 

 the trunk is cut down even with the ground, so that the small, 

 blooming offshoot looks like an independent tree. 



Variegation, — Many readers of these pages will remember the 

 time when beside the common ribbon grass {Phalaris ariLiidinacea, 

 L., var. picta) in our gardens and public parks only a few other 

 plants were found in which the leaves departed from the normal 

 green colour. But now-a-days there are numerous species which 

 show the so-called variegation (appearing now in this way and now 

 in that), in the form of white, yellow and brown spots or stripes 

 on the green leaf-ground. No other land has furnished nearly so 

 great a number of these varieties as Japan. This peculiar tendency 

 of many of its ornamental plants continues even with us, and has 

 enriched our gardens with many kinds of variegation. Siebold 

 attributes it to the influence of the night frost, but without sub- 

 stantiating the opinion.^ 



Out of the great number of such Japanese plants, with striking 

 variegation, I will name only Pines, Juniper, Retinispora, Thujopsis, 

 Podocarpus, Eurya, Laurus, Elseagnus, Aucuba,Pittosporum, Aralia, 

 Salisburia, Euonymus, Sciadopitys, Eulalia, Weigelia. At the 

 Paris Universal Exhibition in 1878, the Japanese surprised us still 

 further with variegated Eriobotrya, and Andromeda japonica. 



Ornamental plants, like other fancies of amateurs, are subject to 

 fashion. The group of variegated foliage plants unquestionably 

 belongs to the fashionable articles of our present ornamental gar- 

 dening. They should be used sparingly, however, and with taste, 

 in landscape gardening, otherwise they become wearisome, for 

 many of them are not at all beautiful, and cannot be considered a 

 real addition. A few years ago, in the park at the Universal Ex- 

 hibition in Antwerp, there was a bed composed entirely of bushes 

 of the Euonymus japonicus, showing white and yellow-flecked 

 leaves in proximity to many simple green leaves, the combined 

 effect of which did not please people of educated taste nearly so 

 well as a similar group having no such mottled appearance. 



The arrangment and colouring of bouquets is not understood by 

 the Japanese. The separation of flowers from their stems and 

 gathering them in bunches is not to their taste. They admire far 

 more their individual beauty and enjoy their natural combinations, 

 — the lovely blossoms (Hana) and leaves (Ha) on their stalks (Ko- 

 yeda) or slender twigs, the iris and the lotus flower on its long stem 



^ " C'est surtoutl'influence du froid, qui a produitles varietes nombreuses des 

 plantes panachees de blanc et de jaune. C'est la gelee, qui, n'etant pas assez 

 torte pour detruire toute vegetation des plantes sus-tropicales, change le coloris 

 de leur feuillage et meme de leurs tiges ; c'est done la gelee qui couvre les 

 feuilles de flocons d'une neige perpetuelle — qui produit des plantes panachees." — 

 Sur I'etat de rhorticulture au Japon, p. 2. Leide, 1863. 



