HINTS FOR PROMOTING THE FERTILITY OF CLIMBERS. 
13 
exuberance. Thus, we continually meet with plants growing year after year in a 
vigorous and apparently perfectly healthy state, without ever producing flowers, or 
the least appearance of a nearer approach to a flowering condition. Some climbers 
when allowed unlimited space for their roots, will extend themselves to fifty or 
sixty feet in length without evidencing the slightest disposition to bloom ; and as 
it is necessary in most cases, and desirable in all, to confine them within a far 
more definite space, unless some means of counteracting such luxuriance and 
promoting a florescent habit can be provided, these plants are unavoidably 
discarded from collections — a mode of getting rid of a difliculty, which, it is to be 
feared, is oftener adopted, than experiments to obviate it. 
We have already hinted that an unlimited space for the ramification of roots is 
one of the primary causes of undue luxuriance. To such an extent is the power of 
space a cause of the excessive production of branches and leaves, that it has 
frequently been considered as the only obstacle to the production of flowers ; and 
the benefit derived from cramping the roots in pots is conclusive evidence of the 
partial efiiciency of confinement ; though, on the other hand, the frequency of 
failure, even with a limited range, is enough to show the futility of trusting 
entirely to it. In conjunction with space, a highly enriched soil tends yet more to 
augment superfluous growth. In this case, as in the animal kingdom, when 
nutriment is furnished too liberally for the power of assimilation, a plethoric habit 
is encouraged, which, instead of being healthy, is a state the most liable to disease, 
if, indeed, it be not in itself a disease. 
It is evident, then, that one of the first operations of the culturist must be 
aimed at the reduction of the means of acquiring a superfluous amount of food ; 
but it must not however be expected that this will at once in all cases prove 
sufiicient to obviate the deficiency in the quantity of inflorescence, though it is a 
direct means of doing so. And it is necessary, moreover, that the supply of 
nourishment be not withdrawn suddenly, to an excessive degree, or the conse- 
quences will be equally pernicious to fertility. A certain amount of nutritive 
matter in some way proportioned to the already acquired vigour of growth, is 
necessary to the formation of those secretions upon which the ultimate disclosure 
of blossoms depends. 
Bottom-heat is undoubtedly a most important agent in furthering the abundant 
flowering of tender climbers, and, indeed, it is in some measure an essential to the 
successful treatment of all plants. Many of the methods of creating it, are 
inapplicable on a large scale ; and it is often wholly impracticable to apply them 
in the summer season in an ordinary greenhouse, without producing injurious 
efiects on a majority of its occupants. And even though this objection should be 
overcome, it is still liable to assist excessive growth, rather than flowers, unless 
some degree of limitation is placed on the sources of nourishment in conjunction 
with it. 
Much may undoubtedly be effected towards diminishing vigour by imposing a 
