56S 
TRIPTILION SPINOSUM. 
and potted in fresh soil, gently watered, and 
placed again in the stove, — or the ground at the 
back of 4he pit will do until their buds swell. 
when they may be placed in the light. Very 
little more than the stem should be left when 
they are pruned, because the branches of the 
season are always enough for the head ; by 
cutting all the branches back to two or three 
eyes it enables you to select from the great 
number of new branches those which grow in 
the best direction to form the head handsome, 
and the rest are to be removed close with a 
sharp knife. There is nothing to do after- 
wards this season but to let them grow, just 
checking the exuberance of any unruly 
branch that becomes conspicuously vigorous. 
Those plants which are bloomed in the house 
are merely removed when past their beauty 
to some place where they will be least in the 
way, and when they drop their leaves they are 
pruned and kept rather dry, until the grow- 
ing time comes again. We have confined 
our remarks to the Datura arborea, — but 
although Ave have done so, sangiritiea (bicolor), 
and hctea will do well with the same treat- 
ment, although rather different in habit, and 
totally different in the shape and colour of their 
flowers. JD. arborea has very large funnel- 
shaped flowers, with a bold handsome open 
mouth ; and the double white is a good 
deal like it ; but the other two are tubular, 
with a slightly enlarged and turned up limb ; 
the bloom is about the same length, but the 
same size all the way down the tube, and 
the lip very little enlarged and turned out, 
showing a small portion of the inner surface. 
It has been said there is a difference in the 
degrees of hardness, but we have had all four 
varieties under the same treatment, answering 
equally well; but we have found the blooms 
always more abundant from a matured plant 
than from the first year's, although they bloom 
the first year from an eye very well. They 
are ill -growing plants if not annually at- 
tended to in the pruning, which is as requisite 
to the Daturas as to any plants we know, for 
they would grow confused and unmanageable, 
too thick with branches, weakly, and perhaps j 
scarcely throw a bloom where there ought to 
be a dozen. There must be some pains taken 
to keep them from the red spider ; but this 
applies to all the plants in the stove, and what 
will cure one will cure another, but uniform 
heat, occasional moisture, sulphur and water 
now and then sprinkled on the pipes, and if 
necessary syringed under the leaves of the 
plant, will prevent this. Red spider, however, 
rarely does mischief; the plant, when neg- 
lected, is subject to it, and it may be looked 
upon rather as the effect of bad health than 
the cause. It is no use cleaning a plant unless 
it be got into health ajrain. 
TEIPTIIIOX SPINOSUM. 
{Euiz and Pavon.) 
THE SPIXV TRIPTILION. 
This is an uncommon plant, though it has 
been for some years introduced. It is, never- 
theless, a plant of very considerable beauty, so 
that its rarity must be attributed either to 
the difficulty attending its cultivation, or to 
the slow means of propagation which it 
affords. Both these causes have, probably, 
had some share in limiting its cultivation ; 
for, on the one hand, though cultivable, it is 
decidedly one of those which are commonly 
called " shy growing," or " miffy " plants ; 
and, on the other, it does not afford such 
facilities for propagation as is usually met 
with in herbaceous perennials, to which class 
of subjects it belongs. We must, however, 
recommend it to more extended notice, for 
the colour of its gay and brilliant blossoms 
can scarcely be dispensed with among pot 
plants required to bloom during summer, and 
their permanence is a great additional re- 
commendation. The following remarks, it is 
hoped, will serve to do away, in some mea- 
sure, with the difficulties which have been 
supposed to hang around its cultivation. 
As already remarked, it is a perennial her- 
baceous plant, attaining, when full grown, 
about the height of two feet. It has a 
thickish fleshy root, somewhat in the way of 
those of the dahlia, but altogether smaller. 
The stems are numerous, slender, decumbent, 
and flexuose, and everywhere clothed with 
hairs. The leaves are of two kinds ; the 
root leaves, that is, those which proceed at 
once from the crown of the plant, are pin- 
natifid, and spring up in autumn after the 
flowering stems have died and been removed, 
