558 THE FUCHSIA AND ITS PRESENT CULTURE. ACONITUM VARIEGATUM. 
THE FUCHSIA AND ITS TRESENT 
CULTURE. 
At every show of the present season, the 
prevailing fault of rapid growth and drawn 
plants destroyed every collection. No matter 
what part of the kingdom, all men seem to 
have forgotten the first principles of gardening, 
and produced the most weakly and untidy 
plants, plants without the strength to support 
themselves in their places, and consequently 
far from what should he seen at Horticultural 
exhibitions. Again they seem to have aban- 
doned some of the very best old sorts, varie- 
ties which have not been beaten and scarcely 
equalled, and to have taken immense pains 
with coarse, weedy plants, bearing flowers of 
no definite colour or character. Where has 
gone Ricartonii ? where is Formosa Elegans ? 
varieties which we pointed out as the best in 
cultivation years ago, and which have really 
not been displaced, though run hard. The 
Ne Plus Ultra of Smith is worthy to be 
shown the same day in the same collection. 
There are no three dark ones to beat them ; 
yet we have in our eye Lowrii, Willmorii, 
and some others, very pretty and worthy of a 
place ; and if men had a grain of sense in 
exhibiting Fuchsias, six out of twelve would 
be dark and six light, and all those coarse 
varieties -which are actually discreditable to 
the people who let them out, and more than 
discreditable to those who have given them 
prizes, would be thrown away. The first 
loss is the best. We have seen Lord Nelson 
grown as well as it could be grown, and it 
proves all we said of it, — a worthless variety 
scandalously imposed on the public as a first- 
class flower by a few dealers who called them- 
selves a society, and gave one another more 
than thirty first-class certificates, for subjects 
of which not six would have been considered 
worth notice by an honest judge. We have 
seen many collections of Fuchsias, and have 
been surprised at the sameness as well as the 
coarseness of the sorts, the prevailing colour 
or shade being a dirty white pounced with 
brick-dust red, and forming by its openness 
or the reverse darker or lighter varieties, but 
all the same cast. Of the twelves we have 
seen, there have been a majority of this kind, 
such as ought never to have been tolerated, 
and should be thrown away. A fine texture 
is essential, a good contrast indispensable, and 
it is not at all complimentary to the taste of 
the public to bring such unmeaning, such 
coarse and uninteresting weeds, to a show. 
We should like to see gardeners, whether 
amateur or professional, contrive to buy half 
light and half dark varieties, and as there is 
no difficulty in finding among established 
favourites half-a-dozen in each class very 
different from each other, and far better than 
anything we have seen in collections, we arc 
surprised at the paucity of even decent plants 
at first-rate shows. With regard to the 
growth, it speaks for itself. The gardener 
who brings drawn plants, and sets up a collec- 
tion hanging about like rags, proclaims his 
own incompetency, and his unwillingness to 
learn. We have often enough told them how 
Fuchsias should be grown ; we have cautioned 
them against heat and exciting compost, yet 
they bring specimens totally spoiled by both, 
specimens that cannot support their own form, 
with leaves and flowers far apart, and quite 
unworthy of the present advanced state of the 
science of gardening. Having done this, we 
caution the judges at shows, for with these 
the means of checking such productions will 
now rest. If they will at once reject all 
drawn specimens, and place very low on the 
scale all those which consist of coarse, inde- 
finite, and inferior varieties, there will be 
some hope of improvement ; if they persist in 
giving prizes to rough, ugly, ill-grown, large 
specimens, the degraded state of the Fuchsia 
cultivation will continue ; if they select short, 
well-grown, well-varied collections a tenth 
part of the size, and place them before the 
gigantic, ugly, ill-cultivated things which 
form the great majority at our public shows, 
they will cure the complaint we make, and do 
great service. 
ACONITUM VARIEGATUM. 
The common monkshood is a well-known 
flower, but it has got into disrepute since 
people begun to understand what constitutes 
a good flower; yet the variegated monkshood, 
Aconitum variegatum, is one of the most 
showy and elegant perennials to be found in 
the British garden. Its habit of growth and 
abundance of flowers of a brilliant blue and 
white colour, claim for it the highest place 
among border perennials. It is undoubtedly 
the handsomest of the family ; but there 
is a very elegant variety that should be grown 
with it, Aconitum speciosum, a handsome 
dark blue of a splendid habit, and worthy of 
a place by the side of the other. These plants 
grow pyramidally four feet high, and are 
tolerably clothed with flowers half-way down 
or even more, and are remarkable for their 
striking appearance among even the best 
other perennials. 
They are propagated by parting their roots, 
though they may be raised from seed, with 
the chance of producing some further novelty. 
At the end of the summer, when the flowers 
have decayed, the seed ripened, and the 
leaves have turned yellow, dig up the root 
