1868 . ] 
LONICERA AUREO-RETICULArA.-CULTURE OF DWARF BANANA 
17 
my experience about hybrid Grapes, and in what line we ought to proceed 
in trying to get these. 
Royal Nursery , Ascot. John Standish. 
LONICERA AUREO-RETICULATA. 
’HIS plant is adapted for a variety of decorative purposes. With us 
')) here it has proved perfectly hardy, which is a point of great import¬ 
ance. Last season we employed it in the flower garden, and found 
it to be most effective as an edging plant, always looking well under 
the vicissitudes of our variable climate. It may be rapidly in¬ 
creased by cuttings of the lialf-ripened wood, in a gentle heat in spring. 
As soon as struck, pot off into small-sized pots, two plants in each, and keep 
them well pinched to induce lateral branches. By these simple means nice 
compact plants are secured by bedding-out time. I take care to have 
them thoroughly liardened-off by gradually exposing them to the full blaze 
of the sun; and plant pretty closely so as to form a compact line at once. 
Should there be any gaps w T e peg down the shoots. Frequent pinchings 
are requisite to keep the line in good order. I never allow the lines to 
exceed 4 or 5 inches in height. As it has proved so satisfactory for the 
purposes I have named, I intend employing it to a much greater extent 
another season. 
It also forms a most desirable plant for pillar decoration in a lofty conser¬ 
vatory when thoroughly exposed. In the shade its beautiful laced foliage 
is but faintly defined. We have plants in the conservatory here 20 feet high, 
equally proportionate. These are objects of interest all the year round. 
Wrotham Park, Barnet. John Eddington 1 
CULTURE OF THE DWARF BANANA. 
AVING succeeded tolerably well in cultivating this very excellent 
exotic fruit—the Musa chinensis alias Cavendishii —I beg to record the 
practice which has led to that result, feeling assured that if the sim¬ 
plicity of its culture were better known, it would be more generally 
grown. 
I first obtained some suckers, which were in due course shifted from pot 
to tub, and from one vinery to another, wherever most heat was to be found. 
In this way I had but very indifferent success, and the plants were always 
liable to injury in their removal from house to house. I resolved, then, 
to try them in the fruiting Pine stove, which is kept at a uniformly high 
temperature throughout the year. The Pine stove is 80 feet long by 18 feet 
wide, and 12 feet from the floor line to the apex of the roof, the house 
being divided in the middle by a glass partition. The Pines are grown over 
