560 GARDEN PLANTS. PART II. 



About February, to facilitate the ripening of the tubers, dis- 

 continue watering. When the stems decay, cut them down to 

 within an inch of the soil. Then take up the tubers carefully, so 

 that the upper part of them, in which alone the eyes are situated, 

 be not broken or injured. They should not be left exposed long 

 to the air, or they will be apt to shrivel and perish ; but as soon 

 as they are quite dry they should be laid in a gumlah, and be 

 covered well over with dried earth, and stored away in a godown. 

 " The buds or eyes," as Mrs. London states, " are not scattered 

 all over the tuber, like those of the Potato, but collected in a ring 

 round the collar of the root, and when in a dry state are hardly 

 perceptible. To discover them, nurserymen often plant the 

 tubers in a hotbed * to start the eyes.' Tubers are sometimes 

 blind, and though put into the ground, and sending out abundance 

 of fibrous roots for several years, still never send up a shoot." 

 The surest way of obtaining plants that produce fine flowers is 

 to procure tubers from Europe. These, however, wear out, and 

 become almost valueless after two or three seasons. Seed sown 

 in October will produce plants which come into flower in Feb- 

 ruary, of which one perhaps out of some twenty may be considered 

 worth keeping, and the rest as only fit to be pulled up and 

 thrown away. 



No plant is more easy of propagation by cuttings than the 

 Dahlia. The tips of shoots nipped off and planted in a flower- 

 pot half-full of river-sand, with a pane of glass laid over it, will 

 almost to a certainty all strike, and soon form young plants. 



Rudbeckia. 



Herbaceous plants, bearing large, showy, but coarse-looking 

 bright-yellow, ox-eye-daisy-like flowers. Best renewed from seed 

 sown annually in October. 



R. triloba. A common weedy-looking plant, nearly always in 

 blossom, with large yellow flowers, having a great ugly cone- 

 shaped eye in the centre. Propagated by division. 



Gaillardia. 



G. picta. An herbaceous perennial, of which there are several 

 varieties ; an invaluable ornament for the garden, enlivening 

 it all the Hot and Kain seasons with numberless large, bright, 



