108 OENAMENTAI, FOLIAGE PLANTS. 



young and slender lateral growths are best adapted for 

 this purposft, but they are at all times very difiBcult to 

 strike. They may be also increased by suckers, and this 

 latter plan is far more certain, but the suckers are very 

 difiBcult to get, at least in a cultivated state, although they 

 produce them abundantly in their native countries. 



A. Ganonii, — ^This will form a pretty plant for the deco- 

 ration of the stove, being so distinct from everything else 

 in the foliage way. Leaves three-lobed, one foot long and 

 about seven inches broad, divided almost to the base ; apex 

 irregularly lobate, purple above, lighter beneath. Native 

 of the Society Islands. 



A. incisa (The Bread Fruit Tree). — The leaves of this 

 plant are from two to three feet long, deeply lobed or 

 incised, deep green on the upper side, paler below. It is 

 of noble aspect and stately mien, and forms a distinct and 

 beautiful object in any collection. Independent of its 

 noble outline, it is exceedingly interesting, from the fact 

 of its yielding perhaps the most extraordinary fruit in 

 the whole vegetable kingdom — the famous "bread fruit," 

 which is said to possess the flavour of new bread, and 

 to be very nutritious, is produced from the axils of the 

 leaves in large globular heads, and is highly prized by 

 the natives of Otaheite ; indeed, so highly was this plant 

 esteemed, and so great were the advantages expected to 

 be reaped by the introduction of this plant into the West 

 Indian Islands, that the British Government, in 1787, 

 dispatched Lieut. Blygh, in the ship Bounty, provided with 

 every convenience for the removal of a large quantity of 

 these plants to those Islands. The failure of his mission 

 through the subsequent mutiny of his crew, is a matter of 

 history with which most of our readers are doubtless well 

 acquainted ; a second expedition was, however, more sue- 



