PLANTS FOR THE DWELLING AND CONSER- 

 VATORY. 



Fig. 1672.— Ficus, Elastica. 



^ "HE flower-loving public is ever 

 on the watch for something 

 new, something wonderful) 

 something they have not seen 

 before, and immense is the capital that 

 at one time or another has been made 

 out of the fact by unprincipled growers 

 in foisting upon the market worthless 

 novelties or old re-named plants and 

 advertising the same with the greatest 

 vigor till the flower buyers have found out 

 the fraud. 



True novelties there is always a place 

 for, but it is not always the new that 

 give the greatest satisfaction ; in many 

 classes of plants the very old varieties 

 are equally as good as the newer ones 

 that appear each year. We will endea- 

 vor to give a short list of plants that are 

 suited to growing in either conservatory 

 or dwelling house. The selection must 



necessarily be carefully made, for an 

 almost endless variety of plants that 

 flouiish in the moist, congenial air of 

 the greenhouse, utterly refuse to do 

 themselves justice in the drier air of a 

 dwelling house. Palms are always 

 among the first plants to be chosen, but 

 they do not always give entire satisfac- 

 tion on first trial, their culture in the 

 conservatory hardly needs noting, shad- 

 ing should be carefully looked after 

 from April ist to October, or the sun 

 may burn the foliage, which is a great 

 defect. Excepting the presence of coal 

 gas, there is no reason why palms may 

 not be successfully grown in any window 

 where geraniums will grow. Choose a 

 soil as nearly all leaf-mould as you can 

 procure, put a few pot-sherds at the bot- 

 tom of the pot for drainage and then 



Fig. 1673. — Araucaria excelsa. 



401 



