THE MAGNOLIA FAMILY. 39? 



than seedlings. Cuttings of the young wood root freely in 

 heat, and may be resorted to when seeds or layering cannot be 

 adopted. Layers, seeds, or grafting are the methods, however, 

 most generally made use of in good tree -nurseries. The 

 weak-growing or other deciduous kinds do best on seedlings of 

 M. discolor or M. glauca ; the method generally adopted being 

 to side-graft pieces of the young growth, when tolerably hard, on 

 to the neck of the stock, without heading it down. July and 

 August are the best months for this operation, the stocks 

 being grown in pots and worked in a close frame. The union 

 between the parts generally takes place in five or six weeks. 

 Some use layers as stocks, but fresh young seedlings are to be 

 preferred. The evergreen kinds do best on M. grandiflora as 

 a stock. Some of the deciduous kinds, as M. Soulangeana, 

 M. discolor, M. purpurea, M. Lennei, and others, are so beauti- 

 ful, even in a small state when grown in pots, that they deserve 

 culture for conservatory decoration in the spring ; and, with a 

 little care in hybridising, a race of dwarf, bushy, free-flowering 

 forms might be obtained. I have seen plants of M. Lennei in 

 a thirty-two-sized pot bear eight or ten of its deliciously fra- 

 grant flowers, which are satiny- white within and deep purple 

 outside, being so elegantly bell-shaped or vasiform withal, that 

 one can only wonder why it is so rarely seen cultivated in pots. 

 The fruits of Magnolias are long and fleshy, the seeds being 

 exposed when fully ripe ; and in this country pot-culture in a 

 greenhouse and careful fecundation would be the most certain 

 means of obtaining them. Numerous seedlings of M. grandi- 

 flora have been raised in this country M. grandiflora, var. 

 exoniensis, being the best. M. Campbellii is a magnificent 

 rosy-flowered species, figured in Hooker's ' Himalayan Plants,' 

 and is quite hardy in Ireland a tree having stood out several 

 years near Cork. It is certainly one of the finest of all the 

 species, and ought to be invaluable to the hybridiser. Her- 

 bert, in his oft - quoted ' Amaryllidacese,' observes : " The 

 French have favoured us with some desirable Magnolias from 

 M. Yulan, fertilised by M. obovata and M. gracilis ; but the 

 mixture of the Chinese species with the magnificent M. grandi- 

 flora, and with the very hardy M. tripetala, is probably still in 

 expectation." M. Porcher, in his interesting work, ' Du 

 Fuchsia,' tells us that M. Soulangeana was obtained in 1826, 

 and that it is a seedling from M. Yulan, fertilised with pollen 

 from M. obovata discolor, and that it was named by the Societe 

 d' Horticulture de Paris in compliment to the raiser, M. 

 Soulang-Bodin, and it may possibly be one of .the French 

 hybrids alluded to by Herbert, but which he does not name. 



