ORNAMENTAL UMBELLIFEROUS PLANTS. 



75 



The Providences answered better than the Queens, but not 

 so well as to satisfy me that it would do to plant out permanently 

 for a succession of fruit, which was the main object of my experi- 

 ments. The second season they produced fine fruit of 6, 7, and 

 8 lbs. weight, with two suckers to each plant, which, at the time 

 the fruit was cut, were nearly as large as the parent. In the fol- 

 lowing spring the suckers grew amazingly, with leaves broad and 

 strong, and to all appearance promised to produce very large 

 fruit. In June all showed for fruit, but it never swelled beyond 

 a sort of receptacle, with five or six good strong crowns growing 

 upon it. Every plant exhibited this condition, and a more favour- 

 able time for them could not possibly have been ; they received 

 no check of any kind, and more splendid plants than they were 

 could not exist. Since this trial I treat the Providence exactly 

 as I do Queens, planting them out when they are large enough 

 for fruiting. 



The Black Jamaica, or Montserrat, of the north of England, 

 as far as my experience goes, is the only Pine that can be depended 

 upon for permanent planting out ; and indeed it grows and thrives 

 much better in this way than it does in pots, and the quantity of 

 fruit will be nearly double, and larger in size, keeping up a suc- 

 cession all the year round, the winter fruit being superior in 

 flavour to all others at that season : it thrives best in ten or twelve 

 degrees higher temperature than is requisite for other kinds of 

 Pine-apple, at the same time it M ill bear extremes of heat and 

 cold, drought and moisture, with any Pine. I have never found 

 any difference in the size of the fruit by thinning out tne suckers 

 from the stool. I find that a stool with three suckers will gene- 

 rally yield as large fruit as a stool with only one sucker on it : the 

 main point to be observed is not to allow them to be too much 

 crowded ; the soil should be light and rather sandy, but the chief 

 points are heat and a moist atmosphere. 



X. — On some Ornamental Umbelliferous Plants. By Thomas 

 Moore, F.B.S., Curator of the Physic Garden of the Worship- 

 ful Society of Apothecaries, Chelsea. 



(Communicated Nov. 29, 1849.) 



Umbelliferous plants are not generally placed in a very high 

 rank in ornamental gardening, but, on the contrary, bear a weedy 

 character. Indeed, if we except the genera Didiscus, Astrantia, 

 and Eryngium, umbellifers are seldom seen in cultivation for the 

 sake of their flowers or ornamental properties. This is certainly 

 not in consequence of the absence of real elegance in their forms 



