36 DECORATIVE PLANTS, TREES AND SHRUBS 



flowers coming very early in the year from a background of deep 

 green glossy foliage. The latter is perhaps its most valuable and 

 attractive feature, for it puts on a bronze autumn colour which makes 

 it highly decorative in the shrubbery and exceedingly useful to the 

 florist. It may be propagated from divisions of the root or rather 

 offsets or suckers, but more generally it is raised from seed sown in 



FIG. 12. Berberis (Mahonia aquifolia) 



the usual way in the open ground ; or may be purchased by the 

 thousand at one year old. The other varieties, grown purely for 

 their flowering excellencies, are increased by taking cuttings of 

 half-ripened wood, with heels, in August as other hard- wooded 

 cuttings referred to in Chapter III. For chaste beauty no other 

 flowering shrub can surpass such varieties as Darwinii and Steno- 

 phylla, whose pretty orange-coloured flowers mass thickly the full 

 length of the previous season's growths. 



