Beautiful Flowering Shrubs 



Botanical Garden ; but, curiously enough, though more 

 graceful and flowering longer than the common double 

 form, it has never become really popular here, its 

 flowers, though daintier, being not quite so showy. 



The shrub grows to the height of five to eight feet, 

 or even more under favourable circumstances. The 

 thin branches are coated with the greenest of barks ; 

 the wood is soft and not durable, and in Japan the 

 pith is used to fashion tiny imitations of buds, flowers 

 and so forth which are floated in cups of sakd. The 

 leaves are stalked with simple blades whose edges are 

 cut into great unequal teeth. In certain varieties of 

 the plant, e.g. K. /. aurea variegata, they are varie- 

 gated and show white, yellow and pale green colouring, 

 and this mottled appearance punctuated by the orange- 

 yellow flowers produces a very gay shrub. Since the 

 leaves in the Kerria are deciduous, it is, however, only 

 a summer shrub. The tendency that it sometimes 

 shows to revert to ordinary green leaves should be 

 sternly repressed by at once eliminating such shoots. 



The flowers come in May. In the single form they 

 are of the ordinary rose type with five sepals, five 

 petals, many stamens, and five to eight small round seed- 

 cases topped each by its column. The plant rarely 

 fruits in this country. In the double-flower form, of 

 course, the majority of stamens become petals and the 

 type form is lost. 



74 



