PRACTICAL HINTS ON A FEW SELECT CLIMBING STOVE PLANTS. 
Unlike Stephanotis this plant flowers freely in the first season of its growth, 
and in very small pots ; but like that plant, it is impatient of too much training. 
In the management of the old plants the best method is to cut them in very 
liberally after they have done blooming, and keep them in a comparatively dormant 
state until January, at which time the greater part of the old soil should be removed 
from the roots, and the plants be re-potted into smaller pots, using the same soil 
and pursuing the same treatment as with young plants. This plant, when planted 
out, makes a magnificent warm conservatory climber. 
Allamanda cathartica. — From Guiana this plant was introduced in 1785, and has 
long and deservedly been a favourite stove climber in this country, flowering most 
profusely when planted out, but rarely producing many flowers when grown as a pot 
plant. This, we have fully satisfied ourselves, arises from the cause pointed out 
in the preliminary remarks to these suggestions ; a fact which any person with 
a couple of plants may convince himself of in a very short time, by training one 
plant and leaving the other to Nature. The Allamanda may be propagated readily 
by cuttings of the young shoots taken off when they are about three inches long, and 
struck in sand under a bell-glass in a brisk moist heat. After the cuttings are 
rooted pot them off singly, using any light open soil, and endeavour to get the 
young plant well established in six-inch pots by the autumn. If the plants are 
rooted early in the spring, they may by good management be made to bloom in 
small pots in the autumn, and these make fine plants to grow into specimens in the 
following season. 
Presuming you have strong established plants, take them about Christmas, and 
having pruned the side shoots to the best ripened buds, reduce the ball a little, so as 
to loosen the roots, and re-pot, using a compost consisting of two parts strong turfy 
loam, one part peat, and one part decayed cow-dung, to which add plenty of coarse 
sand and lumps of charcoal. 
After potting place the plants in a forcing house, and, as they break rather 
tardily, plunge them in a lively bottom-heat ; of course taking due care that it is 
not too hot. As the plants progress in growth remove them into larger pots, treating 
them liberally, by giving plenty of heat and moisture, and also supplying them duly 
with manure water. In this manner they will grow with great rapidity, after they 
have once started, and by the time they have made shoots three feet long will, if 
they have not been trained, be showing bloom. Do not, however, be in a hurry to 
train them, or the flowers will go blind, but let them grow wildly until the first 
flowers begin to expand. You may then twist and train them to whatever form you 
think proper ; but the second set of shoots must be left to pursue their own course, 
or they in their turn will refuse to flower. 
It must therefore be taken as a rule in training the Allamanda, to allow the 
flower-buds to be considerably advanced in size before you venture to repress the 
branches ; and if this simple rule is observed, and the plants are liberally treated as 
to pot-room and attention, pot specimens may be had in full bloom from June until 
