222 
THE FLORIST AND POMOLOGIST. 
[October, 
This plant, which is one of the Bignoniacece^ is a native of Australia, where 
it would appear to be extremely rare. It is a climber, of vigorous habit, with 
persistent trifoliate leaves, having very broad coriaceous subelliptic leaflets. The 
flowers grow in small subumbellate heads, and are tubular, wine-red in the lower, 
yellow in the upper part, the slightly projecting stamens being terminated by 
roundish anthers. According to the French cultivators, the plant is increased 
with the greatest facility by means of cuttings.—M. 
LISIANTHUS EUSSELLIANUS. 
HAVE read with much interest Mr. Douglas’s remarks on this beautiful 
and useful autumn-flowering plant, one which is not often seen ; and I trust 
f they may lead to its more general cultivation. May I be allowed to explain 
a mode of culture most successfully followed out for the last twenty-five 
years, to my knowledge, by an amateur cultivator named Webber, at Exmouth, 
and who has about as well kept a garden for every day in the year as I have 
ever seen, being gay inside and out at all seasons. He has a greenhouse and a 
two-light pit only for propagation and growing on his stock for all purposes, 
and nowhere is there to be seen a dead leaf or decayed flower. In this garden 
there may have been seen, since the middle of July, and there may be seen now 
(September 16), numbers of the lovely Lisianthus Russellianus in the greatest 
beauty and perfection, with hundreds of dark purple or mauve-coloured tulip¬ 
shaped flowers, and which are the admiration and surprise of hundreds of passing 
people,—for every one who walks or rides along the public road can see them 
through his garden pallisading. The unusual colour at this season, and the 
thicket of flowers, seem to catch the eye of all passers-by. My object is to 
explain Mr. Webber’s successful practice in the culture of this plant, by the means 
he has at hand, for the benefit of those who have not the command of heated 
structures and better conveniences. 
To begin with, Mr. Webber clears his little two-light pit of all plants in 
spring, turns out the decayed materials, and places inside again about 2 ft. or 
2 ft. 6 in. of well-wrought fermenting material, in order to command a little 
bottom-heat, to strike his cuttings, and to raise his tender annuals. On to this 
gentle heat is placed the Lisianthus seed, sown on light, open, sweet soil, and 
very lightly covered with sand, a bell-glass or piece of glass being put over the 
pot. As soon as the plants are up, and can be handled, they are taken up with 
a little flat bit of stick, and pricked out in the same sweet, open kind of soil, 
being kept in the same pit to be grown on. Others are pricked out as they 
appear, and are treated likewise. As soon as the plants have grown a bit, they 
are potted into GO-sized pots, each having been taken up with a little flat 
sharp stick, and conveyed to the pot with its little ball of earth carefully—for it is 
the attention to little matters throughout that commands success in the end. The 
fermenting materials have by this time become exhausted and sunk down. A 
temporary stage was formed close to the glass with a few bricks and slips of boards, 
