616 



NOTES OF A HORTICULTURAL TOUR. 



As at Paris, great numbers of Dracaenas and fine foliage 

 plants generally are grown here. These also are at first 

 planted out in frames and pits, in very light rich soil, and 

 thus grown into healthy little specimens before being potted 

 and used for furnishing. Weak and puny little plants put out 

 in spring become nice stocky specimens in autumn, and are 

 then taken up, potted, and placed on a gentle hotbed, where 

 they soon root vigorously into the pots. It needs very little 

 discernment to see the reason why things do so well planted 

 out thus. They are not liable to the vicissitudes which 

 things suffer in pots ; they grow from a moist surface, 

 which, as every plant-grower knows, is so congenial to the 

 health of plants ; and, to put it simply, they are under 

 much more natural conditions than plants confined in 

 pots. 



Epiphyllum truncatum is grown here in quantity and 

 variety, there being a dozen kinds. As many know, this 

 is a first-rate plant for winter decoration. On its own 

 roots it pushes but little ; grafted on the Periskea it makes 

 the free-flowering and vigorous plants which we sometimes 

 see in England, and which are becoming every day more 

 popular. Here, however, they employ, in preference to the 

 spiny and slender woody stem of the Periskea, a species of 

 Cereus, with a thick roundish stem, which forms a worthy 

 pillar for the rich head of shoots this beautiful winter- 

 flowering Cactus makes upon it. This stock should be used 

 generally in England for this purpose. The Epiphyllums 

 w^ere tried upon Opuntias, but without success, the only kind 

 that would grow upon them being E. Euckerianum. 



Of the public gardening at Rouen, that which pleased me 

 best was a very small bit which formed a setting, so to 

 speak, to the statue to Pierre Corneille. It is placed half 

 way over the bridge, where that structure rests on the island 

 in the Seine. A space on a level with the bridge, like a 

 huge recess, is adorned with the statue. Around the stony 

 base on which it rests runs a border of glistening Irish Ivy, 

 elevated on a little plateau above the small lawn. The 

 grass is bordered by a line of dwarf bushy Roses, springing 

 from a band of the same " ould Irish " Ivy ; behind all 



