Cultivation of Greenhouse and Stove Ferns. 97 



kinds of flowering plants may be grown in the same 

 houses with ferns, if the selection is made judiciously 

 in the first instance, and the best positions as to air, 

 light, &c, are selected for them. Thus, as to sorts it 

 will be found that camellias, azaleas, cyclamens, pri- 

 mulas, liliums, oleas, and statices, are well adapted to 

 associate with greenhouse ferns, if the sunniest positions 

 are assigned them; on the other hand, heaths, pelar- 

 goniums, echeverias, epiphyllums, boronias, epacris, 

 and kalosanthes, are far less suitable, needing more 

 air and sunshine than most ferns could endure without 

 injury. It must be remembered, however, that many 

 beautiful plants, such as palms, for example, may be 

 grown with ferns to afford variety, and the same routine 

 of treatment will suit both. In the stove it is common 

 enough to find achimenes, gloxinias, alocascias, cala- 

 diums, begonias, gesneras, and marantas, associated 

 with ferns without the least injury to either. Yet in the 

 full blaze of sunshine, where a croton or an ixora would 

 thrive, it would be almost impossible for a fern to live, 

 except in the form of a disgrace to its possessor. So 

 far we see that compromises are possible. There is 

 yet another mode of associating ferns and flowering 

 plants in the same house, and that is to make banks 

 and rockeries beneath the stages where shade and 

 humidity will favour the growth of ferns, and render 

 positions otherwise useless and unsightly as attractive 

 nearly as the stages themselves, on which the amaryllids 

 or the pelargoniums are blooming bravely. A bank of 

 peat faced with large burrs answers admirably for a 

 fernery of this sort, and the varieties of cystopteris, 



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