50 
REMARKS ON THE TAGETES TENUIFOLIA. 
the title of Tagetes signata. It is, however, doubtless the old 
T. tenuifolia , which was originally introduced as far back as 
1797, but appears to have been lost until this importation has 
again placed it in the hands of cultivators. 
We believe this plant to be one of the most prolific of bloom 
among the whole tribe of annual plants, and one particularly 
adapted for planting out in beds on the lawn or grass-plot. We 
have had an opportunity of observing this during the past summer 
in the garden just referred to, where a small bed of this plant was 
in bloom during the whole summer, and continued flowering up 
to the period of severe frost at the end of October. These 
plants, we were informed, were raised among some other half- 
hardy annuals, and they were potted singly into small pots, ready 
to be planted out when required. These were introduced to a 
small bed, after some early-sown annuals had decayed, near the 
end of June; they were then in flower, though only a few inches 
high, and even dwarf bushy plants, exhibiting the tendency to 
branch out, which increased with their increase, until the whole 
bed became covered with their numberless slender branches, and 
was studded over in every part with their brilliant-looking flowers. 
From that time till the end of October this bed continued quite 
a picture, the plants ultimately not being more than fifteen inches 
high, and forming a dense compact mass. 
It often happens that plants which are most prolific of blossom 
are also the most littery, from the decay and falling of so great a 
number of flowers; but such is not the case with Tagetes tenuifolia. 
In the whole course of our experience we never saw so clean growing 
a border flower: it never appears littery. The flowers are pro¬ 
duced at the end of each of its numerous little branches, and as 
these open the branch which bears them puts forth other branches 
from just below the flowers, and then just grow up to cover the 
old flower by the time its beauty is waning, and the buds with 
which they are furnished are by that time in readiness to expand; 
in fact, some are continually opening, while others are continually 
being covered with the young growing twigs. Thus, the decay¬ 
ing flowers are constantly hidden beneath a covering of most 
elegant foliage and brilliant blossoms. 
Tagetes belongs to the natural order Composite. T. tenuifolia 
