154 SYLVA FLOR1FERA. 



The Portugal broom, multiflorum, is as 

 pleasing by it's delicacy, as the Spanish broom 

 is enlivening by it's gaiety. This shrub, which 

 appears in May and June, clad like a virgin 

 bride in pearls, should be placed where it's 

 flexible rods are contrasted by broader foliage. 

 It forms one of the most elegant fore-grounds 

 to dark evergreens, and harmonizes well with 

 most flowering shrubs; for it's rushy spikes, 

 which seem rather studded with flakes of snow 

 than bedecked by Flora's hand, are too deli- 

 cate to offend by any neighbourhood, however 

 flaunting it may be, whilst it's graceful waving 

 bend so well accords with the chastity of it's 

 colour. The white flowering broom is now 

 considered as a hardy plant in our shrubbery ; 

 although no longer back than 1724, when 

 Miller published his first edition of the Gar- 

 dener's Dictionary, he writes in it, " The 

 " Spanish white broom is a very tender plant 

 " in England, and will seldom stand out the 

 " winter ; therefore it is cultivated in pots, 

 " and kept as bays, laurus tinus, myrtle, &c." 



We have now two species of white flower- 

 ing broom. The first, we are told in the 

 Hortus Kewensis, was introduced by Mr. 

 Bentick, in 1690; but Parkinson speaks of 

 it familiarly in 1640, but does not say posi- 



