9 8 



HEDERA. 



variety. What is known as Italian Ivy is a variety 

 of the Hedera Helix, having smaller leaves and a 

 more branching growth. Many climbers with a hed- 

 eraceous habit, are falsely called Ivies, as Senecio 

 ScandenSy know as German Ivy, Lindria Cymbalaria, 

 commonly called Coliseum or Kenihvorth Ivy, the 

 American or Five-fingered Ivy, and others. These 

 plants deserve their own name. The Hedera has 

 veined, dark shining-green leaves of a waxen ap- 

 pearance, with three, five, and sometimes seven 

 lobes. Its flowers of a greenish hue, produced in 

 umbels, are unimportant ; its beauty consisting in 

 a graceful green cord, studded with unfading 

 leaves. In England and the more southern parts of 

 America, it is hardy, attains an enormous size, and 

 lends an indescribable charm to those stone struc- 

 tures, ruins, trees, or objects about which it twines. 



The Hedera is a classical plant. In Egypt it was 

 sacred to Osiris, in Greece to Bacchus, and the 

 Romans twined the Hedera Poetica with laurel in 

 the crowns of their poets. While poet, sculptor 

 and painter have immortalized it, in the modern 

 home it arches window or door, rounds the angles 

 of the room or wreathes the pictures of loved 

 ones with living green, adding to the walls of the 

 humble cottage a richer ornamentation than gild- 

 ing to the palace. 



SOIL AND GENERAL TREATMENT. 



The Hedera likes a loam well mixed with leaf- 

 mold and rotted manure. 



