18 CULTIVATION AND MANAGEMENT OF THE GENUS CLERODENDRUM. 
the thermometer may fall to 60 or 65 degrees before the following morning. Follow 
this treatment daily, taking care to secure sufficient head-room for the plants in the 
frame, and keep a sharp watch upon the red spider, which is very partial to these 
plants. 
In a fortnight or three weeks from the first potting, they will require a second 
shift, at which time eleven-inch or larger pots may be used, draining them with 
oyster-shells and lumps of charcoal, and using the compost as rough as possible. 
Return them to the pit, preserving the same treatment as before, until the pots are 
again well stocked with roots, after which time it will be advisable to stimulate them 
a little by some liquid manure. The best way to prepare this, is to take two pecks 
of sheep or deer’s dung, one peck of soot, and one fourth of a peck of Potter’s 
Guano; place these in a large tub and mix them into a paste with ten or twelve 
gallons of boiling water, then fill the tub up with sixty or seventy gallons of rain- 
water, and stir the water repeatedly for several days ; at the end of that time take the 
scum off and throw in three or four lumps of lime, and you will have a fine clear 
manure as clear as old ale. In using this, dilute it with half its quantity of clean 
water, and use it of the same temperature as the place the plants are growing in. 
This water is used for watering twice or thrice a week in clear weather; and on days 
when we do not water, we frequently sprinkle our pits and houses with it, and with 
the best effects. 
If the plants grow properly, they will be fit to shift into their blooming pots by 
the middle or end of April, and of course the size of the pot for this final shift 
must be governed by the kind and size of the plants and convenience of house- 
room. We generally bloom one specimen in 13, 15, or 18-inch pots, but we have 
had very nice compact plants in eleven-inch and even smaller pots. 
After the plants show bloom, great care must be taken that they sustain no 
check, or the panicle may be deformed or much checked in its progress, but if they 
are kept regularly and vigorously growing, a panicle of from two to three feet six 
inches long may be insured from C. paniculatum, and with its large and wide- 
spreading foliage we know no finer object. Remove the plants into the greenhouse 
as soon as they are fairly in bloom, and they will continue to bloom until the end of 
the season. After the flowers begin to fade, the plants must be gradually dried off, 
so that they remain quite dry during the winter. In the spring cut the plants 
down to two or three eyes, remove the old soil, reduce the roots, and repot them into 
fresh compost, and start them as in the preceding spring. Clerodendrums may be 
propagated by cuttings of both the old and young wood, planted in very sandy soil, 
and plunged in a brisk bottom-heat of dung. They may also be increased by seed, 
which some of the kinds produce very freely, and it may be sow T n either in the 
autumn as soon as gathered, or any time during the spring months. C. splendens 
may be increased either by cuttings or budding, or by grafting on the roots of the 
stronger growing kinds. This is a trailing variety, and requires to be trained to a 
fancy trellis, or it may be planted out and trained up the rafter of the plant stove, 
