January 30.j 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
305 
June in rows four feet apart, if the soil is fertile, hut 
only three feet if the soil is less productive, and three 
feet from plant to plant in the rows. The plants must 
have the chief part of their stems left uncovered by the 
soil. Two pounds of seed produce enough plants for an 
acre. It is an excellent crop for cleaning the soil, as 
the width between the plants and rows enables the hoe 
to he efficiently used, and during a lengthened period. 
When blanks occur, these may he filled up from the 
seed-bed with fresh plants. 
The produce is from eighteen to twenty tons, and 
upwards, per acre; the bulbs may he kept sound and 
nutritious until very late in the spring, even much later 
than the Swedish turnip. When given to cows, it pro¬ 
motes the secretion of milk, and sheep fatten upon it 
rapidly. 
We consider the Knol-kohl a very valuable crop, both 
for the farmer and allotment tenant, who has either a 
cow or a pig; for the latter thrives well upon it, especi¬ 
ally when boiled. But it is also used as a dinner vege¬ 
table, being peeled, quartered, boiled, and served up with 
a white sauce, like the Jerusalem artichoke. The young 
sprouts are very good also in spring, and especially if 
forced and blanched early. For household use, a second 
sowing should he made at the end of August, the young 
plants to stand the winter, and to produce bulbs for use 
in the spring. 
For some time we have had before us the very excellent 
Catalogues of Seeds, Plants, do., published by Messrs. 
Rendle, of Plymouth; Messrs. Knight and Perry, of 
Chelsea; Mr. Duncan Hairs, of St. Martin’s Lane; and 
Messrs. Lawson, of Edinburgh; and we had purposed 
to point out the particular merits of each; but we have 
refrained from so doing, because we have long thought 
that both we and our contemporaries have been unjust 
to the trade generally, by inserting such notices except 
in cases of extraordinary improvement. Our advertising 
columns are open to all, and they are the proper place 
for acquiring attention to articles offered for sale. 
NEW PLANTS. 
THEIR PORTRAITS AND BIOGRAPHIES. 
Mr. Jackson’s Pitcairnia (Pitcairnia JacJesoni ).— 
Botanical Magazine, t. 4540.—The genus Pitcairnia was 
named by Charles Louis L’Heritier, a French botanist, 
about the year 1777, to the memory of Archibald Pit- ; 
cairne, a physician, and author on medicine and natural 
history. He studied divinity and law in his native uni¬ 
versity, and medicine at Montpelier, whither his health j 
obliged him to go. He was the most renowned prac- j 
titioner of his day in Edinburgh, and had held a pro- 
fessorship at Leyden, where the celebrated Boerliaave j 
was among his pupils. He died at Edinburgh in 1713. 
The specific name is in honour of the well-known firm 
of Messrs. Jackson and Sons, of Kingston-on-Thames. 
Pitcairnia belongs to the Natural Order of Bromelworts 
(Bromeliacese), of which the Pine-apple plant is the chief 
representative in British gardens. They are all six- 
stamened, and, therefore, in the sixth class of the Lin- 
neean system, (i-Hexandria 1-Monogynia, and are asso - 
ciated with such plants as Billbergias, Tillaiulsias, and 
PEchmeas, plants of no known use, if we except Til- 
landsia usneoides, or the Pastlo of South America, which 
hangs down in long strings from the branches of trees; 
is elastic after drying, and used for stuffing birds, pillows, 
and other articles, and, more recently, by plant collec¬ 
tors for packing purposes. They are all natives of the 
New World, but being very tenacious of life, some of 
them have been distributed to Africa and to the East 
Indies, and other tropical parts. They grow in dense 
profusion in the hot parts of the New World, and often j 
leading a sort of epiphitical life, climbing up huge stems, : 
which they fringe with a perpetual verdure, feeding on 
the hot damp air and exhalations from decaying vege¬ 
tables around; or grasping with their eager roots such 
dead vegetable matter as may chance to be within their 
reach. Their leaves form a deep cavity in the centre by 
their close growth at the bottom, and in the rainy season 
the cavity is filled with water, with which the plant sup¬ 
plies itself during the periodical droughts. The eager 
collector of orchids climbs up a tree thus clothed with Pit- 
cairnias and other Bromelworts, in search of his Epideu- 
drums, and in his hurry upsets one after another of these 
water pitchers, and is instantly deluged from a source 
he cannot for a moment divine. On account of this pro¬ 
vident habit of sustaining themselves with food and 
moisture, and also for the gaiety and fragrance of their 
blossoms, they are great favourites in South American 
: gardens, where they may be seen hanging about in all 
j directions, from trees, fences, balustrades, and balconies, 
