412 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
September 30. 
therefore, will probably never rise so high as plants 
of it from seeds; and if this volume of the The Cottage 
Gardener should ever be lost, what will binder a man 
of sense, two hundred years hence, to proclaim against 
j all this, and say that “ these two old trees could never 
come from the same seed.” 
The following plants I noted down as being just in 
character, and well-suited for the new rock-garden (if 
they will have one), in the Crystal Palace Park, or in 
the block-bank wilderness, at Shrubland Park; the 
“Dingle,” at Badger Hall; and in such other places in 
large establishments. They are of a wild, luxuriant 
habit, very seldom met with, and, if planted in large 
masses in any tolerable good soil, would stamp the 
place at once with the character and freedom of nature 
in a wild state. The first and most conspicuous, or un¬ 
common looking, i3 the Pampas-grass, Gynerimi Argen- 
teum. A great tuft of this in the new “ American 
ground” is taller than a man, and only showing for 
bloom. What the length of the flower-stems will be is 
awful to think of, when compared to our “short grass;” 
the blades look more fit for waggoner’s whips than for 
fodder. The centre ones rise up as straight as arrows, 
and the lower and outside ones droop down all round as 
gracefully as ostrich’s feathers on the head-dress of a 
duchess. The roots of another species of Gynerium 
furnish, in decoction, a kind of “ Macassar oil,” for the 
ladies in Brazil to strengthen their hair; and a third 
species of it yields sugar to sweeten their plums and 
puddings with. Penstemon conatum, a very out-of-the- 
way-looking plant, is now in fine bloom in the same 
peat-borders. This also is nearly as tall as a man in 
boots, very leafy, and comfortable looking at the bottom; 
a great treat in this section of the genus, and the flower- 
spikes end in rather handsome flowers, large and wide 
open in the mouth, but not so long as those of gentia- 
noicles. The ground colour is whitish, richly marked 
with purple. 
The next is the Indian Poke, from the north of India, 
and in books called Phytolacca acinosa. In appearance 
this looks very much like a young Datura, but some¬ 
what more soft and herbaceous-like; the flowers come 
on long upright spikes, rising from the forking of the 
branches, and are of not much account; but when the 
fruit comes, it is indeed very curious, and rich in colour, 
just like a long ear or spike of Indian corn, crowded as 
much as possible all round with very small blackberries 
from the brambles in our own hedges, the colour a rich 
dark purple, the height of the plant three or four feet, 
and very spreading; there are seeds enough in one of 
these spikes to furnish plants for a whole county. We 
have it on the authority of Dr. Royle, that the young 
shoots of this Poke or pocan-plant are eaten in the 
north of India as we do asparagus. The berries which 
make up the handsome fruit-spike are very juicy, and 
the juice is as rich in colour as the best port wine; 
indeed, they say that port wine is coloured by the juice 
of these very berries; at any rate, it is a wilderness 
plant to the top of the last leaf. Can any of our readers 
send me a few seeds, in a letter, of the old American 
pocan, Phytolacca decandra, a very old plant, that is 
now as scarce as it is aged in our country, but yet is 
very highly prized by the lady for whom I beg the 
seeds? 1 could contrive to return seeds of the Indian 
plant in return 
My next subject is a buck wheat kind of shrubby or 
half-shrubby plant, called Fagopyrum cymosum. This 
j order of Buck-wheats includes about 500 species that 
I have been described, and out of the whole lot of them 
] you could hardly hit on a better shrub, or a more shrub- 
i like plant, nor one which shows the bloom in more 
J perfect cymes or flat flower-heads, as in the Laurus- 
j tinus. This is, indeed, a perfect subject for the object I 
j am writing about; a very dense-growing large, coarse- 
looking bush, round headed, with soft leaves, and long, 
green, soft, or succulent shoots; but none of which can 
you see without turning the leaves aside; the whole 
surface is studded over with these cymose heads of 
bloom; the individual flowers are very small, but as 
white as snow in September and October, and, perhaps, 
longer; you could mark it out a lialf-a-mile off, and 
think it was a Laurustinus in full bloom. There is a 
whole row of it on the face of a steep bank here, bound¬ 
ing the American-garden, and with other shrubs, alter¬ 
nating with the blue Gum-tree, called Eucalyptus 
globulus, of which a huge plank was exhibited last 
year in the Crystal Palace, but here it is only a mode¬ 
rate shrub, and has stood out unprotected these last 
two winters. You see these two a long way off, very 
conspicimus; the one white all over, and the other a 
rich light-blue—the natural colour of the leaves. Alto¬ 
gether it is very rich, and well worthy of imitation. 
We, in this country, admire the beauty of the blue 
leaves of the Australian gum-trees, but such tints are 
as sad as death bells to the thirsty traveller seeking for 
new gold regions; for, as sure as this blue appears on 
the vegetation in those parts on Mimosas, Eucalyptuses, 
and other natives, so certain it is that he is entering on 
ground as destitute of water as the well-known deserts 
in the old world. D. Beaton. 
(To be continued.) 
VISITING GARDENS—WEEDS—AND WALKS. 
A cynical philosopher is reported to have said, that 
woman should, in one respect, take the snail as her 
model, who never travelled any farther than she could 
carry her house on her back. With every disposition 
to allow that home is the province in which woman is 
seen to most advantage, I should experience little pain 
in hearing of the surly wight being decently tarred and 
feathered who voted for confining her there. The gar¬ 
den is the peculiar province of the gardener, and yet, 
like our sisters, our ideas are apt to become contracted 
or expanded, according to the range of practice and 
observation over which they travel. Allowing for many 
striking and honourable exceptions, the employers of 
gardeners, as a class, have not come the length of 
seeing the importance of this as contributory to their 
own peculiar advantage. If it were otherwise, we should 
seldomer meet with the cool, self-satisfactory statement, 
“ 0,.I never go from home;” or the more pitiful reite¬ 
ration of Sterne’s starling, “ I can’t get out, I can’t get 
out.” Will the self-sufficiency in the one case, or the 
morbid grumbling in the other, be vastly promotive of 
that cheerful activity, that anxious straining to make 
the most of circumstances, without which gardens, how¬ 
ever small, will not be what they might be? I was 
lately speaking of visiting the princely gardens of Chats- 
worth, and a gentleman replied, “You will get as many 
wrinkles there as will pay you for your journey;” and 
he spoke the truth; but I never yet visited a garden, 
however bumble its pretensions, without learning a 
lesson. It is no uncommon thing for families residing 
in the country to allow their cooks a handsome gratuity, 
to visit London, to see and hear of improvements. Is 
not gardening a science, and an art constantly progress¬ 
ing ? Touring and visiting must be kept in their place; 
the gardener, like others, must labour for the employer 
who pays him ; but I shall not have written these words 
in vain, if the proprietors, even of small gardens, see 
clearly, that in giving their gardener from one to several 
days in the year, for visiting places, exhibitions, &c., 
nay, with, in addition, partly or wholly defraying the 
necessary expenses, they will be promoting alike their 
servants’ comfort and improvement, and their own ulti¬ 
mate advantage. 
I allude to this matter here, because the remarks that i 
