138 WOOD AND GAEDEN 



two hands, and the hands are worked opposite ways 

 with a rotary motion of about a quarter of a circle, 

 they soon come apart without being hurt in the least. 

 Delphiniums easily break off at the crown if they are 

 broken up by hand, but the roots cut so easily that 

 it ought not to be a difficulty. 



There are some plants in whose case one can never 

 be sure whether they will divide well or not, such as 

 Oriental Poppies and Eryngium oliverianum. They 

 behave in nearly the same way. Sometimes a Poppy 

 or an Eryngium comes up with one thick root, impos- 

 sible to divide, whUe the next door plant has a number 

 of roots that are ready to drop apart like a bunch of 

 Salsafy. 



Everlasting Peas do nearly the same. One may 

 dig up two plants — own brothers of say seven years 

 old— and a rare job it is, for they go straight down 

 into the earth nearly a yard deep. One of them will 

 have a straight black post of a root 2| inches thick 

 without a break of any sort till it forks a foot under- 

 ground, while the other will be a sort of loose rope of 

 separate roots from half to three-quarters of an inch 

 thick, that if carefully followed down and cleverly 

 dissected where they join, wUl make strong plants at 

 once. But the usual way to get young plants of Ever- 

 lasting Pea is to look out in earliest spring for the 

 many young growths that wUl be shooting, for these 

 if taken off with a good bit of the white underground 

 stem will root under a hand-light. 



