5 ? S L iliac e& A sparagiis. 



25. ASPARAGUS. 



Erect or climbing herbs or shrubs with minute scale-like 

 leaves and numerous very slender fascicled acicular branchlets 

 sometimes spiny. Flowers axillary, small and inconspicuous, 

 on jointed pedicels. Fruit baccate. The elegant plumose 

 branches of the esculent Asparagus, A. officinalis, render 

 this species almost indispensable in floral decorations, though 

 it is seldom seen out of the kitchen garden. A. tenuifolius, 

 perhaps a variety of the foregoing, has still slenderer branch- 

 lets and a much shorter perianth-tube. * A. Broussonetii is a 

 climbing spiny species, from the Canary Islands, having red 

 berries similar to those of the above. There are upwards of 

 fifty other species in temperate Europe and Asia and the tropics 

 of Africa and Asia. The name is of Greek origin, applied by 

 the ancients to the edible species. 



26. CORDYLINE. 



This elegant genus of Palm-like plants, though none are 

 hardy, deserves mentioning here as the species are now exten- 

 sively employed in Summer decorative gardening. They are 

 erect usually unbranched trees, bearing a tuft of long narrow 

 drooping leaves at the summit of the trunk, which in some 

 species attains a height of 30 or 40 feet. Flowers white, small, 

 in branched panicles, and rarely produced on young plants such 

 as are usually seen in gardens. Fruit baccate, few-seeded. 

 Name from KopBvXrj^ a club. The hardiest species are those 

 from New Zealand, of which G. australis with narrow leaves, 

 and C. indivlsa with broad leaves, are the commonest. There 

 are numerous other species in cultivation, frequently under the 

 name Draccena. 



27. CONVALLARIA. 



This genus is limited to the following species, distinguished 

 amongst the baccate genera by its leafless flower-scape and 

 globose flowers. The name is from the Latin convallis, a 

 valley, the natural habitat of this plant. 



1, (7. majalis. Lily-of- the- Valley (fig. 257). This is so 

 universally known as to render a description almost super- 

 fluous. Its delicate white exquisitely scented flowers and 

 bright green foliage are known by almost everybody ; and the 

 demand for it is so great that it is not only cultivated in the 

 open ground, but forced in pots, and may be procured at our 



