Cook I. 



IMPROVEMENTS IN PINE-APPLE CULTURE. 



539 



2923. During the months of November and December, the temperature of the house was generally littfe 

 above 50 degrees, and sometimes as low as 48 degrees, and once so low as 40 degrees. Most gardeners 

 would, I believe, have been alarmed for the safety o( their plants at this temperature ; but the pine is a 

 much hardier plant than it is usually supposed to be ; and I exposed one young plant in December to a 

 temperature at 32 degrees, by which it did not appear to sustain any injury. I have also been subsequently 

 informed by one of my friends, Sir Harford Jones, who has had most ample opportunities of observing, 

 that he has frequently seen, in the East, the pine-ai)ple grooving in the open air, where the surface of the 

 ground, early in the mornings, showed unequivocal marks of a slight degree of frost. 



2930. My plants l emained nearly torpid, and without growth, during the latter part of KoveJnbef, aftd 

 in the whole of December ; but they began to grow early in January, although the temperature of the 

 house rarely reached 60 degrees ; and about the 20th of that month, the blossom, or rather the future fruit, 

 of the earliest plant, became visible j and subsequently to that period their growth has appeared very ex- 

 traordinary to gardeners who had never seen pine-plants growing, except in a bark-bed or other hot-bed, 

 I believe this rapidity of growth, in rather low temperature, may be traced to the more excitable state of 

 their roots, owing to their having passed the winter in a very low temperature comparatively with that of 

 a bark-bed. The plants are now supplied with water in moderate quantities, and holding in solution a less 

 quantity of food than was given them in summer. 



2931. In planting suckers, I have, in several instances, left the stems and roots of the old phnt remaining 

 attached to them ; and these have made a much more rapid progress than others. One strong sucker was 

 thus planted in a large pot upon the 20th of July (1819), and that is (March 1820) beginning to show fruit. 

 Its stem is thick enough to produce a very large fruit ; but its leaves are short, though broad and numer- 

 ous ; and the gardeners who have seen it, all appear wholly at a loss to conjecture what will be the value of 

 its produce. In other cases, in which 1 retained the old stems and roots, I selected small and late suckers, 

 and these have afforded me the most perfect plants I have ever seen ; and they do not exhibit any symp- 

 toms of disposition to fruit prematurely. I am, however, still ignorant whether any advantage will be 

 ultimately obtained by this mode of treating the queen pine : but I believe it will be found applicable with 

 much advantage in the culture of those varieties of the pine, which do not usually bear fruit till the plants 

 are three or four years old. 



2932. Some remarks are next made upon the facility of managing pines in the manner recommended, and 

 upon the necessary amount of the expense. " My gardener is an extremely simple laborer, he does not know 

 a letter or a figure ; and he never saw a pine-plant growing, till he saw those of which he has the care. If I 

 were absent, he would not know at what period of maturity to cut the fruit ; but in every other respect he 

 knows how to manage the plants as well as I do; and I could teach any other moderately intelligent and 

 attentive laborer, in one month, to manage them just as well as he can : in short, I do not think the skill ne- 

 cessary to raise a pine-apple, according to the mode of culture I recommend, is as great as that requisite to. 

 raise a forced crop of potatoes. The expense of fuel for my hot-house, which is forty feet long, by 

 twelve wide, is rather less than sevenpence a day here, where I am twelve miles distant from coal pits 

 and if I possessed the advantages of a curved iron-roof, such as those erected by Loudon, at Bayswater, 

 which would prevent the too rapid escape of heated air in cold weather, I entertain no doubt, that the ex- 

 pense of heating a house forty-five feet long, and ten wide, and capable of holding eighty fruiting pine- 

 plants, exclusive of grapes or other fruits upon the back wall, would not exceed fourpence a-day. A roof 

 of projierly curved iron bars, appears to me also to present many other advantages : it may be erected at 

 much less cost, it is much more durable, it requires much less expense to paint it, and it admits greatly 

 more light." (Hort. Trans. \v. 12.) The president has since (in June, 1820) had such a house as he has 

 hinted at erected, and roofed with our bar ; and in a long paper {Hort. Trans, iv. 543.) read in November^ 

 1821, and two others {Hort. Trans, v. 142. 227.) he has given some account of it, and of his experience 

 in pine-apple culture. The first paper is quoted at length in TTie different modes of cultivuting the 

 pine-apple from its first introduction to Europe, to the improvements of T. A. Knight, in 1822, (a work 

 which should be in the hands of every pine grower,) and the following remarks are from that 

 work : — 



2933. To draw any conclusions in the present stage of Knight's experiments would be premature, 

 and might excite prejudice to anticipate the final result. That the pine-plant will grow and thrive, with- 

 out what is technically called bottom heat, is an obvious truth, since no plant in a state of nature is found 

 growing in soil warmer than that of the superincumbent atmosphere. But to imitate nature, is not always 

 the best mode of culture ; for the more correct the imitation, the less valuable would be the greater part 

 of her products, at least as far as horticulture is concerned. "What would our celery, cabbage, and apples 

 be, if their culture were coined from nature? Though the pine-apple will grow well without bottom heat 

 it may grow with bottom heat still better ; and though the heat of the earth, in its native country, may 

 never exceed that of the surrounding atmosphere, it does not follow that earth heated to a greater degree 

 may not be of service to it, in a state of artificial culture. But admitting for the sake of argument, that 

 the pine-plant could be grown equally well with, as without bottom heat; still it appears to us that the 

 mass of material which furnishes this heat, will always be a most desirable thing to have in a pine-stove, as 

 being a perpetual fund of heat for supplying the atmosphere of the house in case of accident to the flues or 

 steam-apparatus. Besides it appears from nature, as well as from observing what takes place in culture, 

 that the want of a steady temi»erature and degree of moisture at the roots of plants is more immediately 

 and powerfully injurious to them than atmospheric changes. Earth, especially if rendered porous and 

 sponge-like by culture, receives and gives out air and heat slowly ; and while the temperature of the air of 

 a country, or a hot-house, may vary twenty or thirty degrees in the course of twenty-four hours, the soil at 

 the depth of two inches would hardly be found to have varied one degree. With respect to moisture, every 

 cultivator knows, that in a properly constituted and regularly pulverised soil, whatever quantity of rain 

 may fall on the surface, the soil is never saturated with water, nor, in times of great drought, burnt up 

 with heat. The porous texture of the soil, and sub-soil, being at once favorable for the escape of super- 

 fluous water, and adverse to its evaporation, by never becoming so much heated on the surface, or con. 

 ducting the heat so far downwards as a close compact soil. These properties of the soil relatively to plants 

 can never be completely attained by growing plants in pots, and least of all by growing them in pots sur- 

 rounded by air. In this state, whatever may be the care of the gardener, a continual succession of 

 changes of temperature will take place in the outside of the pot, and the comjjact material of which it is 

 composed being a much more rapid conductor of heat than porous earth, it will soon be communicated to the 

 web of roots within. "With respect to water, a plant in a pot surrounded by air is equally liable to injury. 

 If the soil be properly constituted, and the pot properly drained, the water passes through the mass as soon 

 as poured on it, and the soil at that moment may be said to be left in a state favorable for vegetation. But 

 as the evaporation from the surface and sides of the pot, and the transpiration of the plant goes on, it be- 

 comes gradually less and less so, and if not soon resupplied, would become dry and shrivelled, and either 

 die from that cause, or be materially injured by the sudden and copious application of water. Thus the 

 roots of a plant in a pot surrounded by air, are liable to be alternately chilled and scorched by cold or heat, 

 and deluged or dried up by superabundance or deficiency of water, and nothing but the perpetual care and 

 attention of the gardener, to lessen the tendencies to these extremes, could at all preserve the plant from 

 destruction. To lessen the attention of the gardener, therefore, to render the plant less dependent on his ser- 

 vices, and, above all, to put a plant in a pot as far as possi! le on a footing with a plant in the unconfined soil, 

 j)lungiiig the pot in a mass of earth, sand, dung, tan, or any such material, appears to us a most judicious 

 part of culture, and one that never can be relinquished in fruit-bearing plants with impunity. Even if no 

 neat were to be afforded by the mass in which the pots were plunged, still the preservation of a steady 

 temperature which would always equal the average temperature of the air of the house, and the re- 



