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CONVOLVULUS PENTANTHUS. 
allied plants is, therefore, not so much a natural one, (although it is such to a 
limited extent,) as one to which the species is susceptible of being induced by 
artificial treatment. 
Trained to the rafters, roof, or wall, of either the greenhouse or stove, (in both 
of which it will thrive, though the stove appears most suitable,) this pretty plant 
will certainly form a showy object ; as the foliage attendant on the number of its 
stems will effectually conceal the tenuity of the latter, as well as the distance 
between the former. But this is far from being the position in which it can be 
most advantageously displayed. A neat wire trellis, of an oblong, circular, or any 
other shape, less than three feet in diameter, and from three to six feet high, 
(about four feet is the most appropriate,) should be provided for each plant when 
it is first potted, and around this the stems may be directed till they have attained 
the summit, when their extremities must be turned downwards, and made to 
traverse again, but inversely, the same course. By a slight pruning, and thus 
continually training the young shoots between the older and original ones, a suc- 
cession of healthy foliage and flowers can be maintained, and the same plant kept 
in an excellent blooming condition for three or four years. 
Seeds, when duly ripened, may be readily germinated ; and cuttings strike with 
tolerable freedom, if rightly attended to, and placed in bottom heat. A stock of 
young plants should be constantly preserved, so as to admit of the destruction of 
the old specimens when they become unsightly. 
The flowers of this plant were primarily expanded in this country in the year 
1819, when it was raised from East Indian seeds. It has subsequently been 
greatly neglected ; but its cultivation was revived about the year 1837- We have 
recently seen it in most of the metropolitan nurseries, and our drawing was made 
in the stove of Messrs. Henderson, in the early part of last July. Treated as a 
stove species, it flowers during the whole of the summer and autumn ; and, if 
several plants are possessed, there will frequently be some flowers expanded 
throughout the entire year. 
Convolvulus is derived from convolvo, to entwine • most of the species being 
twining plants. The specific name alludes to the number of flowers in each cluster: 
but it is not invariably applicable. 
