176 



THE FLOWER GARDEN COMPANION. 



Descriptive List of Rhododendrons. 



Name. Color. 



RHODODENDRON. 



Name. 



Color. 



CHAPTER VI. 



On the Culture of the Cactus and Succulent Plants. 



ART. 1. Culture of the Cactus. 



MOST of the different varieties of the Cactus are natives 

 either of the West Indies or South America, where the primi- 

 tive kinds are found growing on, and in the chasms of rocks, 

 and on old dead wood, where they often subsist for months 

 without water. Indeed, there are few tribes of plants that 

 will live and endure so long a period of drought as the Cac- 

 tus and its natural families of the JHoe, and those plants 

 which are denominated succulents, as nature seems to have 

 designed them to endure a recess of moisture, by their organi- 

 zation ; being of a fat, fleshy texture, covered with a thick, 

 tough, leather-like coat or bark, which does not respire, or at 

 least admit of respiration so freely as deciduous plants ; and 

 hence, the plants being full of sap, or perhaps more properly 

 a superfluous fluid, intended as a reservoir to sustain them 

 when exigencies (as a long drought) require such provision ; 

 without which they could not subsist. 



The mode of cultivation is to obtain new varieties by 

 seed and cross impregnation, by mixing the pollen of one 

 variety with another, by which the beautiful varieties of 

 Jenkinsonii, JJckermanii, Longworthiana, and many others 



