192 SUBTROPICAL PLANTS EOR THE FLOWER GARDEN. 



of our flower-garden plants is to assume a flatness and dead 

 level, so to speak ; and it is the very qualities possessed by 

 theCannasfor counteracting this that makes them so valuable. 

 Even the grandest of the other subjects preserve this tameness 

 of upper surface outline when grown in great quantities : 

 not so these, the leaves of which, even when grown in dense 



groups, always 

 carry the eye up 

 pleasantly from 

 the humbler 

 plants, and are 

 grand aids in ef- 

 fecting that har- 

 mony between 

 the important 

 tree and shrub 

 embellishments 

 of our gardens 

 and their sur- 

 roundings, and 

 the dwarf flower- 

 bed vegetation, 

 which is so much 

 wanted. Another 

 charm of these 

 most useful sub- 

 jects is their 

 power of with- 

 standing the cold 

 and storms of 

 autumn. They 

 do so better than 



Oanna nigricans. 



many of our 

 hardy open-air plants, so that when the last leaves have 

 been blown from the Lime, and the Dahlia and Heliotrope 

 have been hurt by frost, you may see them waving as 

 greenly and gracefully as the vegetation of a temperate 

 stove. Many of the subtropical plants, used for the beauty 

 of their leaves, are so tender that they go off in autumn, or 



