Vines 329 



they play an important part in fertilising should be kept cut if the 

 vine is to have a long succession of bloom. Red is irresistibly 

 attractive to the ruby-throat, and orange scarcely less so, perhaps 

 for the sake of the red that is mixed with the yellow. Such flowers 

 as need the tropical sprite to transfer their pollen wear his favourite 

 colours, but even this delicate attention is not enough. He demands 

 that his refreshment be served to him in tubes so deep or inaccessible 

 that only his long tongue, which may be extended far beyond his 

 rapier-like bill, may lick the last drop of nectar away from his rivals 

 the humble-bees, butterflies and moths. First the long-spurred red 

 and yellow columbine, the painted cup, the coral honeysuckle, the 

 jewel weed, the Oswego tea and the native trumpet creeper feed 

 him successively in Nature's garden; then the cardinal flower has 

 the honour of catering to the exacting midget before he returns to 

 the tropics. Such flowers as gladioli, cannas, honeysuckle, nastur- 

 tium and salvia keep him busy about our gardens until after frost. 

 There are some exquisitely tinted large-flowered hybrid trumpet 

 vines whose aerial roots will not loosen the shingles on buildings 

 as those of the more vigorous Tecoma radicans sometimes do. 

 They are particularly beautiful grown over rocks. Like the wista- 

 ria, this vine is sometimes used as a lawn specimen by attaching a 

 single leading stem to a stout stake, cutting away all lower, sucker- 

 ing shoots and pruning back the top of the leader to a height of 

 three feet to insure strong lateral branches. Before the stake rots 

 away, the woody vine will have developed a trunk of its own capable 

 of self-support. To make a superbly effective informal hedge, set 

 out a long line of vines thus attached to stakes set three feet apart in 

 light, rich soil, and keep the wilful lateral branches pruned back and 

 attached to galvanised wire strung from stake to stake until, in a few 

 years, they become independently woody. As time goes on, the 



