HORTICULTURE IN NEW ZEALAND. 



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the professional florist does not imitate the enterprise of those who per- 

 fected the Wood Hyacinth. 



At our late show a lady exhibitor staged a specimen of Fuchsia pro- 

 cumbens, brought from the slopes of Egmont, potted, and trained, and an 

 Auckland florist wanted it and its great red berries for culture, propaga- 

 tion, and sale. Is it certain that none of our native fruits can be improved 

 and become marketable produce in this and other lands ? I have seen 

 the berries of the common Tree Fuchsia as large as cherries and as luscious, 

 where the tree had received adventitious aid from the manure applied to 

 the garden of which it formed part of the boundary shelter. The berry of 

 the 1 Kawakawa ' (Piper excelsum) has a piquant and distinct flavour of its 

 own, and is as rich and luscious in its natural state as the 1 Purupuru ' is 

 in pies ; but what they are capable of becoming under skilled care can but 

 be imagined by those who have had their teeth set on edge by the British 

 Sloe, and, as a result, scorned the parent of the Plum. The 1 Tataramoa,' the 

 native Bramble, though the fruit is naturally rather small, is as desirable 

 as some of the Brambles sent from America as novelties, with the advantage, 

 as far as I can judge, of confining its superfluous energies to the production 

 of foliage and fruit rather than in a rampant root-growth which cannot 

 be suppressed. 



With the latent qualities of these and others, only a society devoted to 

 horticulture (and to the horticulture specially of our adopted country) can 

 deal. The conditions of trade in the colonies are not such as to leave pro- 

 fessional gardeners and nurserymen sufficient means and leisure to enable 

 them to devote the time required to experiment. There is here no leisured 

 class with inclination and wealth to adopt experimental horticulture as 

 a pastime or with the hope of doing good. But, as our numerous horti- 

 cultural societies show, we have innumerable colonists with a love for 

 horticulture, and we certainly have a Government most willing to 

 assist in such beneficent operations. To that Government we should 

 naturally turn for an endowment of land for experimental grounds and 

 botanical gardens, the latter a colonial asset, which, in the course of years, 

 we should hope to make equal to Kew in beauty and utility. But 

 the Government, like the larger Providence, is inclined to help those who 

 help themselves. A society would go with better grace to the Govern- 

 ment for assistance, and with more hope of success, if it went, as went 

 the fathers of the English society to King George, with vouchers for sub- 

 scribed capital in its hands. At the same time there is no reason why a 

 tentative and conditional promise of assistance should not be sought for 

 from the Government. 



As is the case with the English R.H.S., our proposed association 

 would busy itself with the importation and establishment of new and 

 rare plants from abroad. And it should be remembered that, having 

 selected from the native forest of our islands beautiful and un- 

 known plants and trees, an almost untouched source for purposes of 

 cultivation and hybridisation, the society would have a rich capital in 

 kind as a medium of exchange with other countries for exotic plants 

 we might procure from them. It may be argued that the plants 

 could be collected in their wild state and forwarded abroad to those 

 who desired them ; but such a transplanting more often than not 



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