1877 .] 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
469 
Good Old Plants—The Blackberry Lily. 
While the American Agriculturist is not behind 
others in presenting desirable novelties to its read¬ 
ers, it has for a long time given special attention to 
the good old plants, which have been pushed aside 
by others of no greater beauty, and whose chief 
claim lies in the fact that they are new. We never 
could understand flower fashions, and the whim¬ 
makes it more valuable to us, than any new comer 
can be, however exalted as to price, or many-syl- 
labled as to name. Because it seemed like the re¬ 
turn of an old friend, we were especially glad to 
become possessed, last spring, of a root of the old 
“Blackberry Lily.” This, Pardanthus Ghinensis, 
was brought from China considerably more than a 
century ago, and is now rarely seen, except in old 
gardens, but it is not any more to be got rid of by 
neglect, than the Chinaman is by abuse, for in a few 
vated in pots, to decorate greenhouses and orange¬ 
ries, a faet that may give those persons who follow 
the fashions, a better opinion of this very old— 
and we wish we could also say common—plant. 
Quick-Growing Climbers— Pilogyne. 
There is seldom much to interest one in the 
suburbs of large cities, which are generally border- 
sies of cultivators ; it may be a fault in our mental 
make-up, but we have not a glimmer of sympathy 
with those who, in the grand profusion of roses, 
go about unhappy, because there is no blue one, or 
with those who, when nature has made a flower 
perfect, and given its finishing touch of exquisite 
gracefulness, go to work and try to torture or coax 
the plant to make a few more petals than nature 
thought proper, and then shout “a double!” “a 
double!” as wildly as that ancient screw-chap 
cried “Eureka!” With what success some of 
these doublers have worked, let the spoiled Lilies 
of the Valley, and the unmeaning monsters, called 
Double Lilies, bear witness. Not that we do not 
approve of double flowers at all—but there is rea¬ 
son in everything, and there are some flowers, nat¬ 
urally so perfect in themselves, that nothing can 
be added to, or taken from them, but an abortion 
results. But we did not set out to write on double 
flowers—though we would protest against that 
fashion which holds that, because some flowers are 
improved by doubling, all must be. Nor do we 
understand that fashion which discards a'flower, be¬ 
cause it is old. We may be all wrong, but the very 
fact that a plant is old—that poets have twined it 
into their verses, that it has been the favorite of 
many a lover of flowers who has gone before, that 
it was cherished by our grandmother, who brought 
the knowledge of it down from many generations, 
A quick-geowing climber. —{Pilogyne suavis.) 
ed by a fringe of buildings, the character of which 
plainly indicates the poverty of their inmates. Yet, 
as we are whirled through the outskirts of Jersey 
City, on our way from the country to the office, 
there is one building we usually try to get a look 
at. It is but a one-story shanty—and no better 
“architecturally,” than its many shanty neighbors, 
but it is made an object of beauty by its vines. 
There are vines at the right and left of the door, 
and around the windows ; vines clamber up to the 
low roof, and pour over, as it were, at the eaves. 
Indeed, the attractiveness of the house consists in 
the fact that one can hardly see it for the vines— 
like that town the boy could not see on account of 
the many houses. The house is poorer than the 
humblest make-shift of the new settler—vet it is 
made attractive by the abundance of Madeira Vines. 
In a visit to Rochester, N. Y., in September last, 
we visited the new house and grounds of W. C. 
Barry, Esq. The house has many claims to beauty, 
and we might be able to describe its architecture, 
had not our attention been diverted by the abun¬ 
dant climbers, which ran up to the windows, hung 
about the pillars, and pilasters of the portico, and 
everywhere added to the beauty of the dwelling. 
These two extremes, the vine-clad suburban shanty, 
and the vine-clad suburban villa, were striking il¬ 
lustrations of what the American Agriculturist has 
so often insisted upon—the utility of climbers in 
of the older States it has in some places set itself 
down by the road-sides, and bides its time. Belong¬ 
ing to the Iris Family,the aspect of the plant is much 
like that of an Iris ; the stem grows 3 or 4 feet high, 
branches at the top, where it bears regular flowers, 
of an orange color, and abundantly dotted with 
crimson or reddish-purple spots. One of its merits 
is its late flowering, being in bloom from mid-sum¬ 
mer to September. But it has another merit; like 
those crackers from its native country, which the 
boys call “double-headers,” it goes off twice. After 
the rather modest but pretty flowers have faded, 
the capsules go on and enlarge, and when quite 
ripe, the walls of the capsule break away and curl 
up, leaving a central column of shining, black-coat¬ 
ed seeds, looking so much like a well-developed, 
ripe blackberry, that the fruit, if not so handsome 
as the flower, is quite as interesting, and 6hows 
that, in this instance, it does not require any effort 
of the imagination, to see the applicability of the 
common name. The name Pardanthus means “Leo¬ 
pard-flower,” and it is sometimes called “pard- 
flower.” In some of the older works it is placed in 
Ida, and it is sometimes called Morcea, but the 
name given above is the one generally accepted. 
So far as we are aware, it is hardy in most of our 
Northern States, but the French writers say that it 
does not endure the winters of Paris without pro¬ 
tection ; they also state that it is frequently culti- | 
