Novemuku 10. 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
105 
l 
TACSONIA CULTURE. 
One of our correspondents, who signs himself 
“ Climber ,” planted two kinds of Taosonias in a cool con¬ 
servatory, last July twelvemonths; the kinds were 
pinnatistipula and mollissima. The borders and the 
management were of the best throughout, from that 
day to this, and he reports that “ they have grown 
exceedingly well, and have covered five rafters, up and 
down, and back again ” fas they go through a country 
dance), “ forty or fifty feet of the span-roof, besides 
running along the wall-plates, and ridge-piece of the 
house.” The mollissima dowered since last May, till 
early in October. What a beautiful, free, and early- 
flowering plant this mollissima is when they give it room 
enough! Only ten months after planting it comes into 
bloom, and holds on in flower for five months next 
season after planting. 1 have been as lucky myself at 
flowering all kinds of Passion-flowers and Tacsonias as 
most people, but I never saw or heard of any of the 
race doing better than that. Pinnatistipula has not 
flowered yet with this reader of The Cottage Gardener, 
and he has manicata, the best of them, in a warm con¬ 
servatory ; in other conditions, it is “ exactly like the 
others,” but no flowers yet. 
I once heard of a Tacsonia pinnatistipula that grew 
like a hop for seven long years, without showing a 
single flower-bud, and were it not for my own pen, I 
verily believe pinnatistipula would have gone out of 
cultivation some years since. There is one cause which 
hinders it from flowering early that few are aware of; 
and there is another cause against it which anybody 
can overcome the first season. The first plant of it 
that flowered in this country, in 1829 or 1830, was in a 
very cool, lofty house, in the garden of Mrs. Marryatte, 
at Wimbledon. This plant seeded as freely as the 
purple Granadilla (Passiflora edulis). I have seen it so 
at the time, and there being such a demand for it, the 
nurserymen took to seedlings, from this very plant, for 
some years, till the country was full of it; but, of course, 
no body could flower the seedling plants till they came 
to a flowering age like other plants. That was the first 
cause against it, and the second grew out of it after this 
fashion. Nine-tenths of the gardeners, and half the 
botanists believe, or once did believe, that the Passion¬ 
flower tribe require great heat, because they are able to 
withstand more heat with less injury than any other 
plants. So more heat was applied to the seedling 
climbers than they liked, and instead of flowering in 
three or four years from the pod, many of them did not 
flower much to this day. 
I forget whether it was in 1829 or 1880 that the 
figure of the first Tacsonia was published, but I ordered 
a plant of it the same week it appeared in print, and 
from that day, till I left Shrubland Park, I. never ceased 
growing it, and I never knew it to fail all the time. 
Until the appearance of manicata, I always thought 
pinnatistipula the best lnilf-luirdy climber of the Passion- 
worts, and now I like it better than mollissima. I have 
grown it, also, from the first day it appeared; manicata 
escaped me till it flowered. 1 believe I had some seeds 
of it from Mr. Hartweg’s lot to the Horticultural Society, 
but they did not vegetate. 
I have already said, that as soon as I saw manicata, 
I got a morsel of it, and in seven months that was 
twenty feet long, and in flower-bud, so that if I did not 
know how to grow a cabbage, I ought to know as much 
about Tacsonias as any one; and now I shall answer our 
friend “ Climber,” after stating his difficulty—one in¬ 
stance out of many. 
He says, “ Now these three plants (Tacsonias) have 
quite filled-up the spaces allotted to them, and hence 
arises the difficulty which I shall beg you to solve.” On 
the subject of pruning them he is doubtful, “ as he 
knows some Tacsonias are impatient of the knife.” Now 
I confess to having used this phrase, “ impatient of the 
knife,” scores of times, but here I am in a fix with it, 
and I shall never use it again without explaining the 
meaning I intend it to convey. When you put a rose, 
or a violet, or a fig, or a cherry, under glass, and keep 
the place rather close, you create an artificial climate— 
or if you give more ventilation, and get the extra heat 
from fire, it is just the same ; the rose, violet, &c., under 
perpetual excitement, are impatient of the knife; the 
more you prune them, the more they will not flower or 
fruit; but out in the open garden you may cut and 
prune at these plants almost at random, yet they will 
flower and fruit. It is exactly the same with these 
'Tacsonias. There are not three other plants in ex¬ 
istence at which you can cut away so freely, and which 
will flower more freely the following summer, or for so 
long a period as them; but keep them only a few years 
in a temperature a few degrees higher than they 
luxuriate in on the heights of Peru, and you disarrange 
their functions, as the doctors say, and then they cease 
flowering, or their flowers are not much worth when 
they do come. 
Mr. Hartweg told me himself that none of the 
Tacsonias grow in the same climate as the Passion¬ 
flowers ; but in a belt of country much higher up on 
the side of the hills, and that the summer is not so hot 
there, nor nearly so oppressive, as a hot summer in 
England. The coldest greenhouse in England must, 
therefore, be considerably more hot, and very much less 
airy or windy than is natural to these beautiful plants 
in summer; and all they want in winter, after they have 
done flowering, is merely to keep the frost from them, 
and not even that, a frost of five or six degrees does 
them no harm whatever after they are pruned. I once 
had long shoots of pinnatistipula in bloom in the open 
air during three weeks of frost, and one morning the 
night thermometer stood at 22°, when I came out 
thinking to find the shoots dead. A few hours after¬ 
wards, a drizzling rain came on, which probably saved 
the plant, as, if a bright sunny day followed such a 
morning, the plant must have stood a bad chance. 
The exact degree of heat which suits them best may not 
be easily found out, but my own experience says, that 
to get them early into bloom, say by the end of May, 
they ought to be gently forced, from the 1st of April, in 
a temperature of from 45° at night, to 55° of artificial 
heat during the day; but more heat delays the flowering. 
If the doors and windows of a forciug-house are open, 
and the sun raises the heat to 80° or 90°, we never call 
that forcing in April or May. As soon as the flowers 
begin to open freely, let all the air be given that the 
ventilators will let through ; and as soon after that as 
the “bedding plants” in the flower-garden are just 
established, and looking as if no more cold would hurt 
them, the whole glass should he taken off the Tacsonias, 
or else they should be taken out of the house, by re¬ 
moving some parts of the sashes, and trained on the 
outside till after the middle of September. In short, to 
leave the glass over Tacsonias during the whole summer 
is nearly as bad as confining Roses under glass during 
the same months. I have acted on that belief since 
1834, and never missed a good crop of flowers from 
them during the time. 
When mollissima came out, I planted one of it against 
a conservatory wall, at Shrubland Park, and a fellow to 
it in the coolest part of the conservatory the same day. 
The one against the wall, in the open air, was in flower 
a whole month before the one in the conservatory, and 
yet the latter was twenty feet longer than the one out-of- 
doors. There never was a better opportunity of testing 
au experiment than this. Roth these plauts are still in 
the same places; but neither of them can have the 
proper and more natural treatment. The one against 
I 
