556 Domestic Notices: — Scotland. 



of a few kinds for ever repeated. This will effect a double good ; it will 

 establish collections in pleasure-grounds, and add immensely to their interest ; 

 and it will render necessary the propagation of a great number of species and 

 varieties in nurseries, which will greatly increase the business. 



MISCELLANEOUS INTELLIGENCE. 



Art. I. Domestic Notices. 



SCOTLAND. 



Yu'ccA. gloribsa. — Among the various productions of Flora which adorn 

 the far-famed gardens of Britain, none rank so high in the estimation of the 

 florist as some of those wonderful plants in the different tribes which com- 

 pose the natural orders Amaryllif?i?(Z^, V>voxae\iacece, Jsphodeleae, TuUpucece, 

 &c. ; so much so, that the celebrated Linnagus designates them, " the nobles 

 of the vegetable kingdom." Our Saviour, in his sermon on the mount, when 

 exhorting his disciples to take no thought for their raiment, points out to 

 them the grandeur of some one or other of the plants supposed to be in one 

 of the above natural orders, by saying, " Consider the lilies of the field, how 

 they grow, they toil not, neither do they spin ; and yet I say unto you, that 

 Solomon, in all his glory, was not arrayed like one of these." Among the 

 most magnificent of these noble plants which have flowered in Scotland, the 

 following have been considered as splendid specimens of their kind : — the 

 Doryanthes excelsa of New South Wales, which flowered in the nursery of 

 Mr. Cunningham of Comely Bank, Edinburgh, in the year 1824, the flower 

 stem of which attained to the height of (I think) 29 feet, finely branched, with 

 many hundreds of splendid flowers ; two plants of the same sort, which 

 flowered successively, a few years afterwards, in the garden at Woodhall near 

 Hamilton, and were noble specimens ; the Agave americana, or American 

 aloe, which flowered in the princely gardens at Drummond Castle, in the 

 year 1832, with a flower stem 23 feet high, and beautifully branched like a 

 chandelier, with a large umbel of flowers on each branch ; and the Yiccca 

 gloriosa, which flowered in the garden at Blairdrummond, in the year 1833, 

 the flower stem of which attained to the height of 12 feet, branched in a 

 pyramidal form, with 1245 flowers. The above plants, when in flower, attracted 

 a great concourse of visitors, not only on account of their elegance and 

 splendour, but also on account of their being but seldom flowered in perfec- 

 tion in this quarter of the world. There is at present a very fine specimen 

 of the Yucca gloriosa in flower in the garden at Blairdrummond. The height 

 is 9 ft. 6 in., with 40 branches, bearing in all 1150 hexapetalous bell-shaped 

 flowers. The flowers are arranged in threes, around the stem of the lateral 

 branches, and are on short footstalks. The flowers are of a light cream- 

 colour inside, and tinged with pink outside. The Yucca gloriosa is of the 6th 

 class and 1st order (Hexandria Monogynia) of Linnaeus, and the natural 

 order Tulipdcece or iiliacefe of Jussieu, is a native of America, and was 

 introduced into this country in the year 1596. The plant at present in flower 

 at Blairdrummond is a sucker from the root of the plant that flowered in 

 1835, and is at present seven years old. The first winter after being removed 

 from the mother plant (which died down to the surface of the ground), it was 

 kept in a pot in the vinery, and in spring planted out in the open border in 

 front of one of the peach-houses, and copiously watered several times during 

 the succeeding summers with liquid manure. A slight covering of silver-fir 

 branches has been sufficient to protect it from the frosts of winter, and last 

 winter a mat was only thrown over it a few nights when very hard frost 

 occurred. Its flowering this summer may be attributed to its getting very 

 dry at one time last summer, and the check it would receive by being so 

 seldom protected last winter. {J. D., Blairdrummond, in the Stirling Adver- 

 tiser for Aug. 25. 1843.) 



