BOOK II. 



ORNAMENTAL TREES OF LESS GROWTH. 



The Arbutus, or Strawberry-tree. 



The Strawberry-tree is an apt appellation for this shrub, 

 for the fruit exactly resembles a strawberry, and it is 

 also of an agreeable acid taste. This shrub is a most 

 suitable subject for single specimens or for mixed 

 shrubberies, but it should be planted where it can 

 display its beauty, which consists in the peculiar 

 feature of possessing flowers and ripe red fruit at one 

 and the same time. The flowers are as much like Lily- 

 of-the- Valley bells as anything, and are very good in 

 bouquets for vases. 



This shrub should be cut back frequently, as it is 

 very liable to get barren below. It may be raised from 

 seed, which should be washed out of the pulp, dried 

 thoroughly, and sown in the month of February or 

 March in deep seed-pans filled firmly with fine sandy 

 peat and maiden loam. The pans should be well- 

 drained, the compost pressed in up to within half an 

 inch of the rim, made even, and the seed sown mode- 

 rately thick over the surface, and then covered one 

 quarter of an inch with finer- sifted soil of the same 

 sort. The pans containing the seed should be set on a 

 gentle bottom heat in a frame or pit until the plants 

 appear. They should then be hardened off for a week 

 and shifted into a cold pit or frame, and shaded from 

 the strong heat of the sun for a month, when the pans 



