546 
CENTRADENIA FLORIBUNDA, 
and we regret it much. It would be a judi- 
cious check on the wooden-leg system with 
geraniums, and is more applicable to them 
than to any other plant. The more we think 
of the contemptible appearance which a side 
view of a show geranium presents, the more 
we see the necessity of an instant check. 
The robust nature of the geranium is nearly 
destroyed ; the very best are for the most 
part of weakly habit, and unworthy of their 
flowers — plants that would not have been 
tolerated but for the knowledge that they 
could be supported by sticks. When Colley 
and Hill used first to exhibit geraniums, the 
plants were strong, healthy, clean, of good 
foliage, and profuse flower, but they had no 
wooden legs. They took prizes for the growth 
of their plants, and not for the ingenuity of 
the mechanic. A seedling of that day had to 
support itself. The flower was not lopping 
about, but maintained its truss with its straight 
elastic stem above its foliage, and looked a 
real instead of an artificial subject. Now the 
growth is distorted ; sticks stuck in the pot, 
with cut flowers at the end of each, would 
have looked quite as well as any of these 
winning plants. Let us hope that the Horti- 
cultural Society, which sees the objection, 
and applies the remedy for heaths, which are 
far less controllable plants than geraniums, 
will also see it with respect to them, and apply 
the remedy. The judges will be too glad to 
receive and act upon the hint. Many of those 
Avho, in ignorance of the plant and its culture, 
fancied there was something very clever in 
producing a geranium with two hundred 
weakly shoots, begin to open their eyes to its 
folly, and will soon, if they have a chance, 
give the exhibitors a lesson, by discriminating 
between a well-grown plant supporting itself, 
and an ill-grown drawn-up thing, with two 
hundred pieces of stick to hold up the branches 
which are too weak to hold up themselves. 
"We repeat our advice to every defender of the 
system. Look at the plants sideways ; ask 
yourselves whether it be not a degradation 
of the gardener, and a desecration of the 
plant, to see its form entirely concealed and 
distorted by wooden supports ? But pains 
are taken to conceal the defect. The plants, 
instead of being exhibited like other plants, 
standing upright in their pots, are propped 
out of their upright by bricks, or flower-pots, 
or blocks of wood 5 or crooked forwards, that 
the top of the plant may hide the deformity of 
the sides, and by spreading out further than 
it naturally would, cover the means by which 
the distortion is accomplished. Make every 
pot stand upright, and the hundreds of sticks 
would disgust even the greatest admirers of 
distorted plants and mechanical contrivances. 
And what better are the roses ? Props, like 
the wires of an umbrella, standing outwards 
from the pots to support the branches ; and 
the very individual who thus furnishes a sub- 
stitute for healthy and strong growth, has the 
temerity to affect the teaching of others to 
do likewise. It would be more creditable to 
both rose growers and geranium growers, 
who owe all their luck to the construction of 
plant scaffoldings, if tliey would first learn to 
grow things Avithout such appendages before 
they attempt to teach. 
CENTRADENIA FLORIBUNDA. 
Centradenia floribunda, Planchon (abun- 
dant-flowered Centradenia.) — Melastomacea^, 
§ Lavoisierea3. 
$\ 
Centradenia rosea is well known in this 
country as one of the most graceful habited 
of all the smaller stove plants with branching 
herbaceous stems. This species is also a very 
pretty one when in flower. That represented 
in the accompanying engraving is however a 
very much finer plant, and much more showy, 
as the size of its blossoms and the arrange- 
ment of its inflorescence bear evidence. It 
is grown in the Belgian gardens, to which it 
