LAVENDER. 



LEAF. 



known and much esteemed for the fragrance 

 of its flowers, and the volatile oil which they 

 yield by distillation with water. It is cultivated 

 in great abundance for the London market, at 

 Mitcham in Surrey. A very poor and light 

 gravelly soil is best suited to this plant, being 

 in such more fragrant, longer lived, and more 

 capable of enduring severe weather than in a 

 rich soil. In rich or moist soils it grows luxu- 

 riantly, but is in general destroyed during the 

 winter. The situation cannot be too open. It 

 is propagated by slips and cuttings of the cur- 

 rent year's shoots, which may be planted in 

 May and June, as well as by cuttings of those 

 which are a year old ; these are to be planted 

 in March, April, and early in May. Both slips 

 and cuttings must be from five to seven inches 

 in length, these, after being stripped to half 

 Iheir length of the lower leaves, are to be 

 planted to that depth either in a shady border, 

 or in any compartment, to have the shade of a 

 mat during mid-day until they have taken root, 

 in rows six inches apart each way. Water 

 must be given in moderate quantity every eve- 

 ning until fully established. 



Having attained sufficient strength, they may 

 be moved to their final stations in September 

 or October, which is the season to be preferred 

 if the soil is not light and dry on which they 

 have been raised; or they may be left until the 

 succeeding spring. If it is grown in consider- 

 able quantity for medicinal purposes, which is 

 the only claim it has to a place in the herbary, 

 it must be planted in rows two feet apart each 

 way, otherwise, only detatched plants are in- 

 serted along the borders. The only after-cul- 

 ture required is the occasional employment of 

 the hoe, the decayed spikes and branches be- 

 ing removed in autumn, and the surface gently 

 stirred with the spade in the spring. 



The flowers are ready for gathering either to 

 dry or for distillation, in July or the end of June. 

 The flowers are used as excitants and carmi- 

 natives in medicine, in the form of tinctures. 

 The oil is an agreeable perfume, and one or 

 two drops rubbed up with sugar and mixed in 

 water forms a useful draught in nervous head- 

 ache and hysteria. 



LAVENDER, SEA. See THRIFT. 



LAWN. A space of ground covered with 

 grass, kept short by mowing, and generally 

 situated in front of a house or mansion, or 

 within the view from such. Lawns, when once 

 established, require only to be kept neat by the 

 ordinary routine of rolling, mowing, and sweep- 

 ing, except keeping the surface perfectly even, 

 by making up small hollows with screened 

 mould early in spring. When lawns become 

 worn out, a top dressing of any finely divided 

 manure will refresh them ; malt dust applied 

 : n October is excellent for this purpose ; and 

 at the same time an additional quantity of grass 

 seed may be sown. 



LAY. A term applied to land in the state 

 of grass or sward. This kind of ground is fre- 

 quently distinguished into such as has been 

 long in the state of sward, and such as is newly 

 laid down'to grass, or into old and new lays. 

 The proper method of managing the latter is 

 of great importance to the farmer, and which 

 Young thought should be by keeping them per- 



fectly free from stock for the following autumn 

 and winter after their being laid down, when, 

 in the spring, they will afford a growth of 

 young grass highly valuable for sheep, with 

 which they should only be well stocked, and kept 

 down then, and during the following summer. 

 Nothing, in his opinion, being more pernicious 

 than mowing a new lay, as directed by certain 

 authors. They may, he thinks, have succeed- 

 ed in spite of such bad management, but never 

 by it. 



LAYERING. In gardening, an operation 

 by which the propagation of plants is effected 

 by laying down or bending the shoot, so that a 

 portion of it may be covered with earth. A 

 shoot so operated on is called a layer, and the 

 point which furnishes the layers bears the 

 name of stock. Some plants are so much dis- 

 posed to emit roots that if their branches hap- 

 pen to come in contact with the earth they im- 

 mediately begin to strike. Plants so situated as 

 to render it impossible to bend their branches 

 to the ground, may nevertheless be layered by 

 having their shoots introduced into a pot or 

 box of soil elevated to them, and supported in 

 a convenient position. This is a common 

 practice among the Chinese, who cause 

 branches of trees to root in this manner by 

 partially ringing them, and covering their parts 

 so ringed with a ball of clay, which is kepi 

 moist. (Penny Cydo.) 



LEAD WORT (Plumbago,- from plumbum, 

 lead). A genus of pretty free-flowering plants, 

 growing in any common soil, and increased 

 readily by cuttings. The root of P. europaa, it 

 is said, when chewed, will cure the toothache. 



LEAF (Sax.). The well-known fine mem- 

 braneous part of a tree or plant, which is put 

 forth and unfolded in the spring, and which in 

 some trees falls off in the autumn. " The leaf," 

 says a writer in the Penny Cyclopaedia, " is an 

 expansion of the bark of a plant, from whose 

 axil a leaf-bud is developed : but this opinion 

 is hypothetical. The leaf is usually thin, and 

 traversed with one or more veins, composed 

 of woody and vascular tissue ; sometimes it is 

 fleshy, and occasionally cylindrical, or nearly 

 so." The functions of the leaf being at once 

 that of respiration, digestion, and nutrition, its 

 surface is covered with stomata, or breathing 

 pores, which communicate with minute hollow 

 chambers in its interior. It is in the leaf that 

 all the peculiar secretions of a plant are pre- 

 pared out of the under sap which the roots ob- 

 tain from the soil, and which, carried up to the 

 leaves, is exposed to the air, and undergoes the 

 action of the vital chemistry which converts it 

 into the proper juice. It is then returned to 

 the stem, and forms the different secretions of 

 the plant, as resin, starch, sugar, gum, &c. A 

 leaf is either united to the stem by means of a 

 petiole, or stalk, or it is sessile that is to say, 

 seated on the branch without an intermediate 

 stalk; the veins pass through the petiole be- 

 fore they can expand into the broad or green 

 part forming the blade of the leaf. Some 

 leaves are furnished with an appendage, which 

 in grasses is a thin membranous body arising 

 from the base of the lamina, and in palms is a 

 coarse net, formed, it is said, of tissue belong- 

 ing to the veins of the leaves. When leaves 



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