August, 19 lo 



AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 



331 



needed and place the box in a sunny window, shading 

 slightly by a bit of cheese cloth drawn between the box and 

 the window, and encourage them to grow as rapidly as pos- 

 sible. 



Heliotropes in the living-room suffer greatly from too 

 dry an atmosphere. It is almost impossible to have them 

 do well unless showered daily with tepid water, and the 

 young plants especially require a moist atmosphere. For 

 this reason the glass should not be entirely removed and as 

 soon as possible they should be potted off into thumb pots 

 and plunged into a box of wet sand which will produce a 

 moist atmsophere, approximating that of a green-house. 



Grown out of doors, heliotropes like a sunny situation 

 and when once established will make a wonderfully luxur- 

 iant growth and be a mass of flowers, all summer. If one 

 is in a hurry for results one can, sometimes, secure large 

 plants from the benches which will give very quick returns. 

 Quite large plants of heliotrope transplant well if the pre- 

 caution is taken not to allow the tops to become dry; if 

 one has a water system this is easily arranged by setting the 

 hose to throw a fine spray over the plants during the day, 

 and lacking this convenient arrangement one must do the 

 best they can with a watering pot, spraying the foliage at 

 frequent intervals during the day. 



The accompanying illustration is from a bed of such 



large plants transplanted into a long bed where they were 

 set about three feet apart, and, in a very short time indeed, 

 had closed up the gap between them and were a wonderful 

 mass of color all summer — such immense sprays of flowers 

 I have seldom seen. The bed being a curved one, only part 

 of it shows. 



Where the supply of heliotrope plants is limited for the 

 area to be covered, use may be made of the ageratum; this 

 is much used in the city parks and unless one takes especial 

 pains to study the detail of the beds its presence is little 

 noticed, the general effect being that of a solid bed of 

 heliotrope. 



There is a great difference in the fragrance of the helio- 

 trope when grown in the open ground, that from seed pos- 

 sessing little if any fragrance, while plants from cuttings 

 owe their chief charm to the delicious odor they furnish. 

 No heliotrope grown in the open air, however, is as frag- 

 rant as the same plant grown under green-house conditions. 

 The plants seem to require the close, moist atmosphere to 

 draw out its fragrance. In the lighter, dryer air out of 

 doors it seems diffused and lost. 



The white heliotrope is admired by many but lacks the 

 warmth of color of the lavender and purple varieties, and 

 is more desirable for indoor and window box planting than 

 for growing in the open ground. 



Vegetable Fountains 



By W. R. Gerard 



N THE early part of the last century, the 

 eminent botanist, Dr. Nathaniel Wallich, 

 while exploring the forests that skirt the 

 coast of Martaban in Lower Burmah, dis- 

 covered a gigantic climbing shrub, of 

 which the wood was exceedingly soft and 

 porous and presented a very peculiar 

 structure. When the stem of this plant, which in some cases 

 measured ten inches in diameter, was divided, or even when 

 the smaller branches were broken, there gushed out a very 

 large quantity of a clear, tasteless and wholesome fluid, 

 which was found by the discoverer to be in common use 

 among the natives for drinking purposes. 



In view of this peculiarity. Dr. Wallich, in creating a 

 genus for the reception of the plant, named it Phytocrene, a 

 word of Greek derivation meaning "vegetable fountain." 

 This name, so well befitting the vine just mentioned, might, 

 with equal propriety, be applied to certain other produc- 

 tions of the vegetable kingdom, which in one portion or 

 another of the world serve as strange reservoirs to supply 

 man and animals with a liquid suitable for drinking pur- 

 poses. 



In many sections of the forest lands of the southern 

 States, where, during the dry seasons, a man may walk for 

 miles without finding a stream of water or a spring from 

 which to quench his thirst, nature has provided a means of 

 obtaining a supply which is known only to the initiated. 

 Every old hunter carries with him, when going on a long 

 excursion, a small augur, by means of which he can at any 

 moment secure a refreshing drink, as well as water with 

 which to cook. A cottonwood tree or a willow is the well 

 which is tapped by a huntsman, who carefully examines each 

 tree until he finds one that has what a woodsman calls a 

 "vein," which is simply an attenuated protuberance. On 



boring into this "vein," a stream of clear liquid will at once 

 flow out; not a stream of sap, by any means, but one of pure 

 water, which is said by huntsmen to be better than the aver- 

 age to be had from ordinary wells. 



Another example of such vegetable fountains is afforded 

 by the West African "Musanga," and a curious example, 

 too, because this tree belongs to a family which includes 

 plants that abound in a milky juice, which in the case of the 

 Cow-tree of South America is perfectly wholesome, and, in 

 that of the celebrated "Upas," is of a most poisonous 

 nature. The "Musanga" contains no milk, but, on the con- 

 trary, is so gorged with clear, tasteless water, at all times 

 and in all seasons, that when an incision is made in its 

 trunk, and a vessel is placed at its base, more than ten 

 quarts of potable liquid may be collected in twelve hours. 



Sierra Leone has its vegetable fountain in a species of 

 Tetracera, a climbing shrub found in the hottest, dampest, 

 and most deeply shaded forests, and which owes the name 

 of "Water-tree" given it by the English settlers to the fact 

 that when its stems are cut across they yield a copious sup- 

 ply of clear water that can be used for drinking. 



The flora of Brazil includes among its many useful plants 

 a most elegant arborescent grass — a species of bamboo, 

 which attains a height of thirty or forty feet and a diameter 

 of six or more inches. This plant, which is called by the 

 Tapi Indians "Takwarussa," or "big cure," forms almost 

 impenetrable thickets upon hills and mountains and in dry 

 places, and, according to Humboldt, is always a most wel- 

 come sight to the hunter, who, upon cutting through its 

 stem below one of the joints, obtains from the younger 

 shoots a copious supply of a clear, pleasant tasting liquid 

 scarcely distinguishable from spring water. 



Another South American species of bamboo, growiinT 

 farther west, has, on account of the same property, re- 



