Vines 327 



does not suffocate, it is airy, and its pendant sprays that hang from 

 a veranda give a softening touch to hard architectural lines. It 

 makes the poor man's cottage or cabin picturesque, and it costs 

 nothing beyond the labour of digging it. On the rich man's per- 

 gola its graceful sprays, swaying in the breeze from the beams 

 overhead, are as effective as those of its relative, the wild grape, 

 which is one of the very best vines we have for Italian arbours. 



A climbing tree in itself is the wistaria, one of the greatest of 

 the many treasures that have come to us from the Far East. Some 

 superb old specimens in Japan have trunks two feet or more in 

 diameter. To complete a picture of mellow age there is nothing 

 comparable to a fine old vine. Its decorative effect means far more 

 than mere ornament. As about seven years must elapse before a 

 newly planted young wistaria will bloom, it is a great advantage 

 to start with vigorous roots without a tangle which will produce 

 wonderful growth if put in rich soil and given an abundance of 

 water. A friend who transplanted a gigantic vine from an old 

 house to his new one was convinced that what the wistaria chiefly 

 suffers from is a lack of moisture, so he invented a novel method of 

 supplying it. A bottle sunk in the earth and fed from a hose over- 

 flowed into the soil about the roots only as fast as the water seeped 

 away or was absorbed by the vine, and no faster. The wistaria 

 never knew it had been moved, although it was not brought up on 

 the bottle until it had reached its second childhood. 



Commonly trained around piazza and pergola pillars (which it 

 sometimes weakens), over arches and fences and along walls 

 and it could not be less than charming anywhere this best of 

 flowering vines never appears to greater advantage than when 

 grown to trail its way at will among trees, for it has a half-wild 

 luxuriance that seems to call aloud for naturalistic picturesque 



