Notes and Gleanmgs. 227 



Selaginellas. — These are excellent plants for clothing the shady walls of a 

 plant-stove. No better illustration of this fact can be found than is now to be 

 seen in the Sheffield Botanic Garden, where the north wall of the Victoria 

 House is draped with them, several species being mixed up together. We have 

 never seen so pretty an effect produced by these refreshing-looking plants in 

 any other situation. The wall is faced with a six-inch layer of coarse peat and 

 rubble, with a little moss outside, the whole being held in position by strong 

 galvanized wire-netting, with rather wide diamond-shaped meshes ; and the only 

 attention required by the plants is a damping with the syringe daily. — Florist. 



A gardener of Ghent has, after many trials, succeeded, writes Galignani, in 

 giving any kind of fruit the flavor he pleases while it is still on the tree. Let us 

 take an apple for instance : he pricks it rather deeply in four or five places with 

 a large needle, and then lets it dip for a while in a bowl containing a liquid pos- 

 sessing the flavor he wishes to communicate. After a few seconds, this liquid will 

 have penetrated into the pulp ; and, this operation being repeated two or three 

 times at intervals of eight or ten days, the apple is left to ripen on the tree, and 

 will subsequently be found to have acquired the taste either of strawberry, 

 raspberry, or cloves, according to the liquid employed. 



Ficus STiPULATA. — It is scarcely possible to overestimate the merits of 

 this plant for a certain purpose ; viz., that of covering the back wall of a stove 

 or orchid-house. It will succeed in positions where scarcely any other creeper 

 would exist. A damp wall suits it admirably ; but it must have plenty of 

 room, especially root-room. A plant permanently planted out forms a dense 

 carpet of green foliage all through the season, clinging ivy-like to the wall, but, 

 if possible, with more tenacity. The only attention bestowed upon the plant is 

 frequent syringing during the summer season, and an occasional pinching-in of 

 the shoots when they advance too far from the wall. It strikes freely in a little 

 heat from half-ripened wood. It is often called Ficus repens. 



The Coleus. — These plants are of comparatively recent introduction, 

 though several species have been well known as stove-plants for half a century. 

 Of these the most common is C. Blnvtei, known also by the euphonious name 

 oi PlcctrantJius concolor picttis, which has been for seventy-five years an inmate 

 of every stove, and which, when well grown, is really a very pretty plant. The 

 great trouble with it is, that no one with only a moderate amount of glass at his 

 disposal can afford space to grow it. When C. Verschaffeltii was introduced, it 

 was a great advance, and the old species soon fell into disfavor ; but that, for 

 a time, was grown as a stove-plant. It is only within a few summers that the 

 growing taste for bedding foliaged-plants has developed the fact that many 

 of our soft-wooded semi-herbaceous stove-plants do admirably as summer- 

 bedders ; and of this class none are better examples than the different species 

 of Coleus. 



The old species {C. Blumei) is not, however, of much value as a bedder, as 

 the variegation is not sufficiently marked, and the colors are apt to run ; but 



