306 



Notes and Enquiries on certain Plants 



The deciduous-leafed ligneous menispermums may be additionally recom- 

 mended as hardy, free of growth, thriving in almost any soil and situation, 

 and increasing freely by their sprouting suckers. M. canadense, male, has, at 

 least, these properties; and the assimilating kinds have, it is most probable, 

 the same. 



When transplantation of the deciduous-leafed ligneous menispermums is 

 intended, the performing of it in autumn, winter, or very early in spring, will 

 prevent that diminution of the plant's beauty in the following summer and 

 autumn, which a later transplanting tends to cause. M. canadense, male, 

 leafs so late as, sometimes, the middle of May, yet it is probably active in its 

 roots as early as January. 



WcedgfiecB. " . . . . Flowers dioecious, rarely hermaphrodite." {Lind- 



ley's Introd. to Nat. Syst., p. 68.) 



i7ipp6phae. " Some of the flowers are reported to have stamens and 



pistils occasionally in the same individual." (Smitti, in his description of the 

 genus in the class Dice Via, order Tetrandria, in his Englisti Flora, iv. 237.) 



H. rhamnoides. {fig. 38., 13879.)* 



38 

 13882 13878 f^, /V, ^^^1 .^ \ IV 1 ^ 13879 



The male sex (13879. a). Are not most of the plants of H. rhamnoides 

 that are in the gardens of Britain of this sex of it ? I had not seen, until 

 April 28. 1835, a plant of the female sex of it ; although I had inspected plants, 

 and examined some flowers, of H. rhamnoides, through the space of some 

 years previous, mainly in gardens of Cambridgeshire and Suffolk, and previous 

 to 1830, in the wish to become familiar with it. On April 28. 1835, I had the 

 gratification of seeing the fruit-bearing sex, in the arboretum of Messrs. Lod- 

 diges. Hackney, standing near a plant of the male sex. The plant abounded 

 in fruit (13879, c) in the terminal portion of its branches; and this fruit 

 must have been persistent through the winter. Plants of the male sex, in 

 individuals old enough to bear flowers, may, when bearing flower-buds, be dis- 

 tinguished in winter, when the branches are leafless, even without an intimate 

 examination of the flower, by the knotted character which the very numerous 

 spikes of flower-buds give to the branchlets which bear them. The flower- 

 buds blossom before the expansion of the new leaves in spring, and, I believe, 

 in the early part of April. This is about the time, or a little earlier than the 



* The engravings which accompany this are upon the same block, and 

 hence are not conveniently separable : they represent, 13882., SchsefFerM com- 

 pleta; 13880., Broussonetza papyrifera, one of the sexes ; \SSS1 ., Nageia Pu- 

 tranjlva. Information on these is contained in the Encyc. of Plants, where 

 these engravings have been first given. 



