12 
HINTS FOR PROMOTING THE FERTILITY OF CLIMBERS. 
The free production of flowers by many species of stove and greenhouse 
climbers has long been a desideratum with cultivators, and various schemes have 
been devised to overcome the difficulty, without however, except in a partial 
degree, attaining any extensively useful results. We still find in a majority of 
instances that peculiar species, and these by no means a very circumscribed 
number, manifest a decided unwillingness to disclose their flowers, or to disclose 
them in sufficient abundance to render them the gorgeous and attractive objects 
which the loveliness of individual blossoms justifies us in considering them likely to 
prove, if a more fertile habit could be induced. And, indeed, we are not alone 
dependent on mere supposition for the truth of this, for the accounts which 
travellers bring of the profuse inflorescence and magnificent appearance which 
some of these very plants carry in their native wilds, fully demonstrate that the 
fault does not entirely lie in a naturally unproductive constitution, but rather 
emanates from our own ignorance of the requisite conditions, or in the partial and 
erroneous fulfilment of them. This is still further corroborated by particular 
plants, occasionally, as it were, through purely accidental treatment, becoming 
unexpectedly adorned with a profuse array of bloom. 
By careful observations and inquiries into the circumstances which have once 
produced such pleasing results, and the manner in which they have acted upon the 
constitution of the species, nearly all the late advancements in the art of culture 
have been acquired. And though in some cases these may at first thought appear 
to be a complete departure from Nature ; if they be scrutinously examined, we 
may confidently assume, that however opposite they may appear in their character 
from the modus operandi of Nature, they are really and truly nothing more than 
a nearer approach to the same proportion of different agencies that exist in the 
climate of their native home. Thus we are here unable to supply the same amount 
of solar light, which plants enjoy in tropical countries ; and we can only furnish 
them with an equal amount of heat or of moisture, in the proportion which these 
agents naturally bear to each other. 
We have offered these preliminary observations by way of preparing the 
reader for the suggestions we shall presently have to submit, which, being some- 
what out of the ordinary line of expedients, might, on a superficial examination, 
be considered fanciful. It must be remembered that in the artificial treatment of 
plants, it is rather the application of those conditions or principles by which 
certain results are obtained, than an actual and strict adherence to the particular 
manner in which they are accomplished in a state of nature, that the cultivator 
should study to observe. 
The most frequent, and, indeed, almost the sole reason of the non-production of 
flowers by many species of climbing plants, is, unquestionably, a state of excessive 
