JUNE. 
161 
BOUGAINVILLEA SPECIOSA. 
(Plate 177). 
We tliis month furnish our readers with a coloured representa¬ 
tion of this wonderful plant, which has flowered so magnificently 
for these last two or three years past under glass in the garden of 
the Bev. C. E. Ruck Keene, at Swyncombe House, near Henley- 
on-Thames. The roof of Mr. Keene’s plant stove, in which it 
is growing, has been one mass of floral beauty for several weeks 
this spring. In April last the plant covered with lovely mauve- 
coloured inflorescence nearly 400 feet of glass, and would have 
covered even more, but that every terminal spray hung down 
loosely, many of them a yard or more in length. Certainly it 
was a glorious sight; the house, however, in which the plant is 
growing is ill adapted for the exhibition of its wonderful beauty. 
One wants to look down upon it as it is looked upon by the sun, 
to which its blossom is displayed. At a distance from it, and 
standing on a somewhat higher floor, you see imperfectly the 
upper surface of the mass of bloom lying nearly close to the glass; 
and in the slanting light of the evening sun the whole of the leafy 
canopy reflects on one side an almost glowing sheet of colour; 
while on the other, partly in the shade, and the semi-transparency 
of the coloured bracts thus coming into play, it has more of an 
amethystine hue. 
The plant at Swyncombe has already a stem as thick as one’s 
wu-ist, and everywhere there is evidence of the most vigorous 
vitality. 
, As regards treatment, however, we have been favoured by the 
following letter on the subject from Mr. Daniels. He says, “ Let 
us commence with a young plant, say in a 60-sized pot. I should 
first turn it out and examine its roots, and if I found them 
healthy, I should pot on into a 32-sized pot, using a mixture of 
peat and loam, in about equal parts, in a rough state, with a fair 
proportion of silver sand, taking care to use plenty of drainage, 
as the plant, though a gross feeder in an older state, is very 
impatient of too much moisture while young, several fine healthy 
young plants having died that have been sent from here, from, I 
have no doubt, too much water, and the soil being allowed to 
become sour from imperfect drainage. After the plant is potted, 
plunge it in a sweet bottom-heat, such as that of a Cucumber or 
Melon pit, or Pine stove; and if this is done in spring, stop the 
plant, so as to make it throw cut lateral shoots, with the view of 
producing a stiff handsome bush. If to be grown as a specimen in 
a pot, this stopping and shifting must be practised at intervals 
of about a month for the whole summer, taking care that the 
pot is well filled with roots by August (and never shift till the 
VOL. XT., NO. CLXI. M 
