(3 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
October 7. 
sheet on the north; however, we have no experience of 
tlio rough plate. 
As an enconragemeut to those about to venture on 
tlio Hamiltonian system, it may be observed, that Mr. II. 
has had it in operation for many years. At first, in a 
poor, low, contracted, and rough-looking house, which, 
without the noble pines it contained, would have been 
but a sorry affair. Sucli, however, was his success, 
that his employer empowered him to build a handsome 
new house to his own liking, and hero the system may 
bo sceii duly carried out. Wo now give an extract, in 
concluding this paper, from Mr. H.’s letter now on tiio 
tabic: “ Tlic gardener of II. IMarsland, Esq., of Wood- 
banks, is going by my instructions. He has throe 
])lants of the Montserrats ('’) with three fruits each, and 
there is every probability of the nine fruits weigliing 
thirty-throe pounds.” R. Errington. 
{To he continued.) 
YUCCAS. 
In these days of plant-growing, for fame, for gold or 
silver medals, or for hard cash, such old jdants as Adam’s 
needle, and the like of it, that are thought beyond the 
art of the specimen grower, are left to nature, or rather 
are taken from her care, and then turned adrift to take 
care of themselves as best they may. Yuccas will grow 
or live in any kind of soil, if it is not too wet, and when 
one ilowers any thing beyond the common run, it is 
reported in the periodicals as something strange, like 
the flowering of the American Aloe, as it is called, and 
lio one turns his attention to the improvement of the 
race, or, if ho does, he thinks tliore is little merit in 
saying much about it. Hence it is, that if you wish to 
flower a Yhicca, and wmdd learn the easiest and best 
way to go about it, you juay look through all the authors, 
from Phillip Miller to the last number of The Cottage 
Gardener, and not be much the wiser. Indeed, I do 
not remember a single author who has given a full j 
account of the propagation and cultivation of Yuccas 
as a class, except Mr. Gordon, of the Horticultural 
Society’s Garden, at Turnham Green, and that was seven 
years ago (Gardeners' Chronicle, ]84.5,y). 384). Since that 
time, Mr. Gordon has so far improved on his own re¬ 
corded practice, that his success surprised me the othc]’ 
day on looking over the garden. liilcc most other 
gardeners, I never dreamed that Yuccas arc as sus¬ 
ceptible of imju-ovement, at the present day, as the Pine¬ 
apple plant was twenty years ago ; but so it is, without 
any shadow of a doubt, and not oidy that, but it may 
be so managed as to become a regular competitor on 
the exhibition tables. 
As far as I can make out, we have only one instance 
on record, in which a Yucca was exhibited in a pot for 
a prize, and that was in Eifeshire, in Scotland, some 
years ago. The llower-stcm of this plant rose seven feet 
from the pot; the plant was exhibited in September, 
and was only struck from a cutting the March before. 
We know that some people run away with an idea that 
the Yucca, and the American Aloe, flower only once in a 
hundred years ; others are as far wrong, who assert that 
a Yucca will flower regularly every year, after it once 
comes to a flowering age. The opinions about this age 
arc also as far from the truth as the rest of the story. 
I Some will tell you that five or seven years will bring it 
I into a flowering state; others say ten years ; wliilst a 
1 third says liftecn, and a fourtli goes as far as twenty. 
I All this is in black and white, in my own libi'ary; but 
! thcro is a 4ucca in the nc.xt parish to me, Ijong Ditton, 
I which did not flower for twenty-live years alter being 
j planted, and it might have been two or three years old 
I at the time. It is now m bloom for the third time, and 
' there were just five years between each time of flowering. 
Tlio truth is, however, that tlic flowering of Yuccas 
depends on soil and situation, rather than on certain or 
uncertain dates. 
Yucca gloriosa is the one wo hear most about, and this 
plant is a native of the sea-shore, in the southern states 
of North America, and although, it lives with us in 
almost any soil or situation that is not absolutely w'ct, 
it prefers the sea-coast, a full southern aspect sheltered 
from all other points, the best friable loam, and a rock, 
or chalky bottom perfectly dry. In such situations in 
Devonshire, Cornwall, the Isle of Wight, and the South 
of Ireland, it blooms every year as well as it does in 
Virginia or South Carolina. 
At its full age, it is not proof against those very severe 
winters we sometimes experience in this country. Eor 
instance, the great celebrated tree Y^uccas, in the Oxford 
Dotauic Garden, with stems five feet high, clear of leaves, 
and which Mr. Baxter, the no-lcss-cclebratcd curator, 
successfully transplanted, were cut down to the ground 
by the frost of the winter of 1837—38, but they S])rang 
again from the roots, while plants of four or five kinds 
of tliein, not nearly so largo or ripe, as wo may say, 
stood out in Kilkenny without any protection whatever. 
It has been observed, that more Yuccas flowered with us 
in the hot summer of 1820 than in any one season 
before or since. In that year, a Yucca gloriosa superha, 
tlie best variety, with the purple on the back of the 
petals, flowered for the first time, after being twelve 
years planted, and two years when planted in a nursery 
at Windsor. The top of the flower-stem was twelve feet 
six inches from the ground; the flower-stem itself being 
upwards of nine feet; out of this stalk grew forty-seven 
side branches, eighteen inches and upwards in length, 
and each produced from twenty to thirty flowers, or 
probably 1,100 flowers in the whole. Who would not 
envy so noble a specimen of this much - neglected 
plant. “ J3ut stop a while ”—another individual of the 
same species, whose girth, at fifteen inches from tlie 
ground, was 2b^ inches, produced six flower-spikes at 
the same time, on which was counted in one day no 
less than 2,704 flowers. Rut the most splendid specimen 
of Yucca on record, under cultivation, is a plant, or 
rather tree, of the Aloe-leaved species, of which the 
Countess Dunravoi sent a drawing to Mr. Loudon, 
from the gardens at Adare, in Ireland. This drawing is 
given in many of Loudon’s works; in the Vegetable 
Kingdom of Dr. Lindlcy; and in other works here and on 
the continent. This Y'^ucca was twenty-eight feet high ; 
at ten feet from the ground the trunk girted seventeen 
inches, and at twenty feet it divided into “ six massy 
branches, each terminating in a pyramid of ilowers.” | 
Notwithstanding such instances, a Yucca gloriosa tljat | 
is from three to five feet high in the stem and leaf, with | 
a llower-stcm of about equal dimension, would bo a | 
very fair specimen to pride oneself on, after a few years 
cultivation, on the principle advised by The Cottage 
Gardener. 
It is very strange that no writer has sufficiently ad¬ 
mired the Yuccas as fit plants to introduce into geometric 
flower-gardens, for which they are admirably suited, 
when reared with the sole view of that kind of furnish¬ 
ing; and no less so, that some of our great architects— 
Sir Charles Barry, for instance—have never thouglit of 
them as architectural plants, as one may say, instead of 
the great aloes which Sir Charles, at any rate, is so fond 
of for rearing up on pillars and corners in his elaborate 
designs. I could name more than one place in which 
Sir Charles Barry introduced, not only an aloe or two, 
but aloes in great numbers, as architectural ornaments, 
such aloes being cast in lead, and placed in stone, or 
composition vases, after being daubed over with a vile 
light-green colour, cockney fashion ; and these aloes, 
too, anything but real imitations of the natural plant. 
Add to all this, a sharp north-easter, the thermometer 
