CULTURE OF IPOMCEA LEARII. 
205 
wild in abundance by Mr. Lear, a collector to Mr. Knight, of the King's Road, 
Chelsea, the flowers are so diminutive compared with those developed in such 
amazing quantities in the stove of Mr. Knight, that the latter were scarcely 
recognised as identical with the former ; and its extraordinary luxuriance beneath 
artificial management is never realized in its ordinary localities. 
The extremely ornamental nature of this plant, — a good specimen producing 
several hundred flowers daily, — renders any account of its cultivation peculiarly 
interesting, and we proceed to detail the leading points in its character, habits, 
and treatment, which we have observed in the various places where plants have 
been open to our observation from the period when it was first introduced. 
I. rubro-coerulea , though a very beautiful species, is, we may state, so completely 
eclipsed by its more novel and showy ally now before us, that, except in larger 
collections, it has already passed out of notice. 
No one can have had the opportunity of frequently examining I. Learii 
without perceiving that it is a most rapid-growing plant, covering an immense 
surface, and ramifying into an astonishing number of strong healthy branches. 
Those who have seen the original specimen, however, at Mr. Knight’s, and some 
others that have been obtained from it, must farther have detected two kinds of 
branches, one sort ascending, and attaching themselves to whatever is placed for 
their support, the other issuing from the base of the stem, and trailing along the 
ground like the runners of strawberries, but not protruding shoots from their joints. 
The difference between these two descriptions of branches is much the same, in 
effect, as that between common shoots and suckers in ordinary shrubs and trees ; 
and much importance may be ascribed to the use that is made of them. If, from 
a wish to avoid cutting the specimen, the lower trailing shoots are employed for 
propagation, the plants formed from them will be very like those produced by the 
suckers just named; — healthy, vigorous, and disposed to occupy a large space 
without blooming. Cuttings of the upper shoots, on the contrary, produce flower- 
ing laterals in a very short time, and a fine blooming specimen may even be raised 
in one season, by taking off the extremities of the longest shoots as cuttings. 
Indeed, the dimensions and early blossoming of the plant may be regulated most 
easily by the distance at which the cutting is taken from the main stem, provided 
it is from one of the principal branches. If prepared from the extremity, it will 
flower very speedily, and in a dwarf condition. If made from a shoot that is in 
an early stage of its growth, it will constitute a larger specimen, and be longer in 
bearing flowers ; while the intermediate conditions may readily be realized by a 
due regard to these simple circumstances. 
By bearing the foregoing facts in mind, the cultivator will be enabled to obtain 
plants of different sizes and in a variety of states, according to the object he wishes 
to accomplish with them ; from shading a roof fifty feet long, to covering a wire 
trellis affixed to a pot. And we have repeatedly witnessed the fulfilment of both 
these ends by the adoption of the means herein described. 
