34 
PORTULACA splendens. 
Garden Variety. 
We presume this to be a mere variety of Portulaca Thel- 
lusonii, figured at plate 31 of our volume for 1840 ; but if so 
it is one of singular beauty. Its origin is however unknown to 
us. Seeds of it were purchased of Mr. Charlwood, in Covent 
Garden, for the Horticultural Society, and in the Chiswick 
Garden it flowered in the autumn of 1842. 
It is a charming tender annual, about a foot high, which 
flowers most abundantly from July to September, if treated in 
the following manner. 
The seed should be sown about the middle of March in 
pots filled with a mixture of sandy loam, old lime rubbish, 
and well decomposed cow-dung in equal portions. The 
plants should be raised on a hot-hed, and when large enough 
should be potted off singly into small sixty-pots, filled with the 
same kind of compost as that in which the seeds were sown. 
The young plants when potted should be again returned to the 
hot-bed, and when well established, their pots being well 
filled with roots, should be re-potted into upright thirty-twos, 
draining the pots well, and covering the surface of the soil 
with a thin covering of fine sand. 
After this the pots should be placed on the front shelf 
of a greenhouse, where they are freely exposed to the sun, 
hut guarded from wind and rain, the first of which destroys 
the flowers, and the latter the plants. Care must also be 
taken in watering the plants ; as on this much depends 
of the success in their management ; for they are very sub- 
ject to damp off close to the soil. 
It is also possible to grow this Purslane in the open 
ground in a fine dry season, if it is planted in a hot situation, 
where it can be protected from heavy rain and wind, but it 
will not, under such circumstances, display all its beautiful 
effects. 
