94 
NOTICES ON THE CULTURE OF NEW AND RARE PLANTS 
IN THE LEADING NURSERIES IN THE VICINITY OF LONDON, 
On Leucothoe (^Andromeda) floribunda. At a period when it plainly appears 
that the climate of Britain is annually becoming colder, and the weather more rigor- 
ous, it is of great importance that such plants as are capable of enduring the most 
severe weather, should be generally known and cultivated ; and more especially, 
when those plants are evergreen, highly ornamental, and produce their flowers in great 
abundance. In vol. iv. p. 101, we gave a drawing and description of the subject of 
this notice, and we were then very dubious as to whether the flowers would attain 
any perfection in the open air if the winter were very severe, as we there stated the 
singular fact that its flowers were formed in the autumn, which of course renders 
them more susceptible of injury from frost or cutting winds. Since that time, how- 
ever, we have attentively watched the progress of some plants of this species in 
several of the London nurseries, particularly in those of Messrs. Rollison and 
Knight, and during the intense severity of the late season, not a flower-bud, nor 
so much as the points of any of the leaves, has been at all injured. In the nur- 
sery of the latter gentleman especially, some fine plants were left standing in the 
open ground, in an exposed situation, and without any protection, while others 
were constantly covered with a hand-glass, as the prevailing opinion seemed to be, 
that this plant was not quite hardy, or at least, that it would not endure very 
severe frost. The result, however, has sufficiently established the contrary fact, 
as those plants to which no protection had been given were equally healthy and 
luxuriant, and the flowers were as fine and abundant as those which had been 
covered with the hand-glass ; thus clearly demonstrating that this plant is in the full- 
est and most enlarged sense of the term " perfectly hardy." At the present time, 
(May,) the plants in the collection of the above gentlemen are densely covered 
with their pretty white blossoms, and they have been in this state for nearly a 
month, forming amidst the general desolation caused by the extreme rigour of 
the past winter, a truly novel and interesting picture in the garden. It is scarcely 
necessary to observe, that a plant so very ornamental as the one here noticed, and 
which is capable of enduring such weather as destroys nearly every plant that 
before had any claims to be considered hardy, is one of the most truly valuable 
hardy shrubs at present known in our collections ; and we would strongly recom- 
mend all our readers who do not already possess it, to procure plants of it imme- 
diately, as, notwithstanding the interest that always attaches itself to hardy 
evergreen shrubs, the subject of the present remarks is one of the most profuse 
flowering plants with which we are acquainted. For further particulars relative 
to its cultivation, we refer our readers to the page before quoted, and though by 
