362 
JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
stems, which will not have time to ripen, and will consequently 
be doomed should we have another severe winter. 
Moreover, it must be remembered that what takes place 
above ground is an outward and visible sign of what is going on 
under ground and out of sight. The rhizomes need to be 
ripened as much as the culms ; and the chief reason why so 
many species, such, for instance, as Phyllostacliys mitis and P. 
aurea, which are rampant travellers in their own country, send 
up their shoots only immediately round the old culms here, is 
that the points of the rhizomes, not being thoroughly ripened, 
are every year killed back to a very large extent. 
At its best our climate reverses the order of things to which 
Bamboos owe their vigorous growth in their native homes. In 
the far East the hot season is also the wet season ; whereas with 
us the summer is generally dry, while the winter months are 
wet. Heat and moisture in combination are what is required ; 
and then in Bamboo-land it is such heat and such moisture ! 
The luxuriant grace which is born of these, and which is the 
chief characteristic of a Bamboo grove, is something of which 
we can only produce a very feeble copy ; but even that humble 
imitation will add an elegance to our wild gardens which no 
other plant can give. Indeed, a Bamboo cane, waving its plumes 
some eighteen or twenty feet high in the air, is no contemptible 
feature, and this much, we know, can be attained, and in fact 
has been attained by Lord de Saumarez at Shrubland, by Sir 
Edmund Loder at Leonardslee, and by others. My own plants 
are as yet in their infancy, yet I have had culms of Arundinaria 
Simoni thirteen feet high. Under tbe most favourable conditions 
of steaming summer heat in China or Japan, it takes some five 
years to grow a fine plant of Bamboo. We must not be sur- 
prised if in this country the same plant has to struggle for well- 
nigh double the time before it asserts the full vigour of which it 
is even here capable. Some impatient persons are annoyed 
because, in their second year, their plants of P]iyllostacJi7js 
mitis or Pliyllosiadiys ni(/ra do not spring up into mid-air, and 
this too after subjecting them to such treatment as was of 
itself almost enough to kill them. Patience wo must exercise, 
but there are some very simple precautions which will do much 
to save long waiting and weariness of heart, and will coax a 
newly imported Bamboo into growth in a surprisingly short time. 
