302 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
Admitted; and to supply such gaps The Cottage Gar¬ 
dener was established; but, be it understood, the points 
we have adverted to require more explanation as to the 
minutiae than can be explained in a number or two. 
Much may be gleaned from the van of this work ; and 
much more, we may add, remains in the rear. 
As we may not have an opportunity, immediately, of 
speaking as fully about the dressing of plums, cherries, 
&c., we may here observe, that as soon as the more 
tender kinds, as apricots, peaches, nectarines, and pears, 
are completed, the cherries and plums must also under¬ 
go a revision. 
As to plums, they may receive precisely similar treat¬ 
ment to the pears; and we tie down the cherries in a 
like manner; they are not, however, so manageable by 
this mode as the former fruits. The Morello cherries 
may have their shoots laid in three times as thick as the 
larger-leaved kinds. 
In apricots the utmost care should be taken after this 
period to keep down all superfluous breast-wood ; the 
sun must be permitted to sbine on the embryo fruit-buds 
without hindrance until the leaves fall. This is the 
chief secret of the blossom “ setting well ” in the en¬ 
suing spring; and thus it is that old apricots, which 
produce scarcely any breast-wood, generally succeed so 
much better than young and gross trees, 
R. Errington. 
THE ELOWER-GARDEK 
Calystegia Pobescens and other Hardy Climbers. 
•—A few years back the London Horticultural Society 
surprised the botanical world with a new double Tower¬ 
ing Bindweed, which they introduced from the north of 
China through their collector, Mr. Fortune, and which 
they called Calystegia pobescens — that is, the downy 
Bearbind. The large white Bindweed, which grows in 
our own hedges, and the small white and pinkish ones 
which creep among the grass by our road-sides and dry 
banks, are also called Calystegia in books; and this new 
one from China was found to be a near relative to our 
larger Bindweed or Bearbind. How they could make 
out this relationship between the two plants from a 
double Tower, was a great surprise to our fresli-water 
botanists—or those who only possessed a smattering 
knowledge of the Linnsean classiTcation. There were 
no stamens or pistils to count over to make out even the 
class or order of the Linmean arrangement, much less 
the particular genus; and the men of science, if not 
surprised, were, at least, much interested in it, as being 
the very Trst double Towering plant belonging to the 
natural order of Bindweeds ( convolvulacece ) of which 
they had ever heard. If any of our readers still cling to 
the shades of the obsolete system by which a knowledge 
of plants was obtained through the system of counting 
stamens and pistils, devised by the illustrious Swede, 
this Chinese Bindweed, with double Towers, should 
close their account with the Linmean Society at once ; 
then to turn a new leaf and begin a fresh score—not 
with the old Trm as formerly, but rather with the heads 
of the natural system society, whose officers had no more 
difficulty in Tnding out the proper place in their ai - - 
rangement for this new Tower, double as it is, than I 
should in counting how many thumbs I carry about 
with me. It is extremely rare that we see botanists put 
to the test of determining the name or relationship of a 
new plant with a double Tower, because in the wild state 
plants are supposed to take only after the single type. 
The old Corchorus Japonicus is the only other instance 
which occurs to me at present of a double (lowering 
plant being introduced, before we had any knowledge of 
the single form of it; and that, too, has proved a Taw in 
the system of Linmeus. This double Towering Corchorus 
was cultivated in our gardens for more than a hundred 
[August 16. 
years under that name; but as soon as a plant of it 
with single Towers only was introduced, some Tfteen 
years back, then it was found not to be a Corchorus at 
all, and, as a matter of course, the plant had to be 
named over again; for naturalists are not like poli¬ 
ticians—they do not hold with ancient names or old 
arrangements for the sake of “ consistency,” which is 
only a polite name for obstinacy, although obstinate 
people often call them hard names for this trait in their 
character; and the new and proper name of our old 
Corchorus is now Kerria. 
That double Bindweed and this Kerria japonica and 
many other “ japonicas” that need not be named, prove 
to ns, whether we would or not, that Chinese gardeners 
know as much about the art and mystery of making 
double Towers from single ones as any of us, and, per¬ 
haps, a good deal more if all were known. The Bind¬ 
weed under notice is certainly a production of the art of 
gardening in China, and not a wild form of the plant. 
There are those who see no beauty in a Tower unless it 
is a double one; and there are others who think just the 
contrary; and there is a saying in the Highlands,when 
a man undertakes to do a thing which he is not capable 
of performing—to the effect, that “ if he cannot make a 
spoon he can spoil a horn ”—spoons being made in that 
wild part of the world actually from horns. The adage 
may well be applied to the Chinaman who produced our 
double Bindweed: he did not make the spoon, but he 
spoiled a horn; from the most lovely single Tower of all 
the convolvuli, or bindweeds, he has produced the ugliest 
of all our double Towers; but still he effected what no 
one else ever managed to do before him—originated a 
double convolvulus. And I have the gratifying intelli¬ 
gence to communicate to-day that the Chinaman’s knot 
is unloosed, and that the plant has reverted to the single 
form in the Tower-garden here; and a most beautiful 
thing it is, nearly as large as the Tower of Ipomcea 
Learii; the colour, between salmon and French white, 
with Tve stripes or divisions of a lighter hue; and when 
we consider that the plant is as hardy as our own hedge 
Bindweed, and will increase as fast as a potato, and is, 
therefore, every cottager’s plant, we ought to congratu¬ 
late our cottage friends on the acquisition of so nice a 
summer climber to train up before their doors. 
I cannot make out what caused the plant to turn 
single; it was planted in one of those barrels I often 
have recommended, aloug with the new Yellow Jasmine 
from China, against an old oak in the “ Swiss Gardens,” 
and facing the north. It did not see the sun these last 
two seasons; and, like the rest of our out-door plants, it 
received neither dew nor rain for two months this sum¬ 
mer ; but the barrel was watered with strong manure- 
water once a-week, for the sake of the jasmine, which I 
wished to grow fast; and which I wish was planted 
against the front of cottages as extensively as the China 
rose ; and for the pillar of a verandah nothing could an¬ 
swer better. This bindweed might be planted along with 
it, so that it might climb up of itself against the jasmine, 
and so save the trouble of training it. Those who are 
looking out for things of this sort to cover a north wall, 
will Tnd these two new plants well adapted for the 
purpose. 
Before I close this part of my paper, I want to re¬ 
commend another summer climber lately introduced by 
the Horticultural Society through Mr. Fortune, as it is 
not nearly so well-known as its merits deserve : I mean 
Rhynchospermumjasminoides, a beautiful white Towering 
sweet-scented climber, requiring about the same treat¬ 
ment as the lovely Mandevilla, Towering out of doors 
from Midsummer till August, when the Mandevilla 
comes in to succeed it. I am not quite sure what degree 
of covering protection itrequires in winter; but I should 
think much about the same as the Mandevilla or any of 
the new Fuchsias, just to keep it from damp and frost. 
