Notes and Gleanings, loi 



• 

 they are very ornamental, to say nothing of the agreeable odor that they exhale. 

 I was, however, struck more with the laburnums, perhaps, than any other flower- 

 ing-shrubs that I noticed ; simply, perhaps, because I met with them much more 

 frequently than I had been in the habit of doing ; growing, too, under very differ- 

 ent conditions, — sometimes in gardens and pleasure-grounds where they probably 

 were carefully attended to, and sometimes where treated apparently with neglect. 

 In my own experience, this shrub is very uncertain about flowering, often bloom- 

 ing once only in three or four years : yet, as I saw them in England, they were 

 everywhere full of flowers ; and, being frequently large plants, their yellow 

 flowers made them attractive to the eye. There is another shrub that should, 

 perhaps, be added to the above, although not met with very frequently, and 

 only seen in gardens and pleasure-grounds, yet there planted in the open ground, 

 where they were apparently thriving, and thus to be considered acclimated in 

 England : I mean the rhododendron. The rhododendron, as I have occasion- 

 ally seen it in the open ground in America, is a rather low-growing, bushy 

 plant, that, although handsome in flower, never impressed me very strongly ; 

 but some that I saw in England appeared to me very ornamental, in part owing to 

 their own beauty, and in part to the manner in which they were trained. Those 

 to which I refer were trained into the form of small trees with a single stem, at 

 three or four feet from the ground, branching out and forming a fine head, that, 

 when in flower, were striking objects. There is a row of rhododendrons in Hyde 

 Park, London, planted at considerable distance one from the other, trained in 

 this manner, with trunks four or five feet high, and, as I now remember, four or 

 five inches in diameter, with proportionally large heads, that were, when full of 

 flowers, exceedingly ornamental, and by far the finest that I have ever seen. In 

 the mild, moist climate of England, the ivy thrives and flourishes in perfection, 

 covering old walls and the sides of old buildings ; creeping up to the very top 

 of old towers, mantling them with a coat of its evergreen, shining foliage, and 

 thus hiding the traces of decay and time; and maybe considered, though neither 

 flower-bearing nor a shrub, as one of the ornamental plants of England. I shall 

 say nothing of the indigenous flora of England ; I could not if I would. To find 

 her wood-flowers, it would be necessary to seek them in places out of the route 

 of the ordinary traveller. England is so highly and generally cultivated, that 

 every eflfort would be made to banish such as noxious weeds ; and though a few 

 ox-eyed daisies, buttercups, dandehons, and corn-poppies, would escape the rav- 

 ages of the plough and hoe, those with patches of daisies in the grass, and of 

 tall foxglove by the road-sides here and there, are nearly all that the passers-by 

 on the roads will see. England probably contains, in her conservatories, green- 

 houses, and botanical collections, specimens of almost every known plant on the 

 globe. To procure them, collectors have searched the North and the South, the 

 East and the West, Siberia and India, the west coast of America, and China, 

 Japan, and the islands of the ocean, to enrich their own country with the floral 

 treasures of every clime. Yet but few of these are seen unless sought for, and 

 such are seldorii used for purposes of ornament. In their flower-gardens and 

 grounds the English make great, I might almost say exclusive, use of what are 

 commonly called " bedding-out " plants, — the dwarf scarlet geraniums, verbenas, 



