Lobelia Cardinalis. 351 



LOBELIA CARDINALIS. 



There is a little nook in my garden which I call the " Wilds," because 

 only such plants grow there as I have collected in my rambles in the wood- 

 lands. The most attractive of the many wild flowers, mosses, and ferns, 

 transplanted from their native wilds, is a group of that incomparable plant, 

 the Lobdia cardinalis, which I transplanted last July while the plants were 

 just coming into flower. 



Perhaps some of 3-our readers will be glad to learn how easily and suc- 

 cessfully this can be done with proper care and management. Selecting 

 plants that grew in rather a dryish, stiff, or compact soil, I cut them up in 

 cubes of about ten inches soil, placing them (about twenty in all) carefully 

 in a box, and packed moss about them to keep the soil intact, bringing 

 them home a distance of eight miles. Having a bed prepared with twelve 

 inches of leaf-mould from the woods, peat, and river sand, in equal parts, 

 with a little spent hot-bed manure in the bottom, I placed the cubes closely 

 together, filling in the crevices with the same kind of soil as at the bottom, 

 and gave the whole a good soaking from the cistern. The plants did not 

 appear to be affected in the least by the removal, but continued to grow 

 and flower as perfectly as in their native meadow. 



For two months they continued to flower in tall, graceful spikes of the 

 most vivid scarlet, and seeded fully and completely. The stools now look 

 fresh and thrifty, promising finely for next year. I doubt not, another sum- 

 mer, they will prove vigorous plants, and yield abundant bloom. 



It is a mistaken notion that this plant will thrive only in a wet soil. My 

 obser\'ations are, that although they are frequently found in wet places, 

 sometimes even in running water, they grow much larger, and flower longer 

 and better, in a stiff, clayish peat-soil, which becomes dry in dry weather. 

 In such localities the roots are shorter and more confined, therefore more 

 readily transplanted. A couple of plants transplanted last year in a similar 

 manner grew and flowered finely this year, though planted in a soil far 

 from being wet, and with no attention except an occasional soaking from 

 the watering-pot during a few weeks of drought. 



