188. 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN, December 27, 1859. 
to in Scrip!ure than number seven, as if our natures 
could not well be impressed without seven repetitions of 
the very same thing—as seven blow s, seven bruises, seven 
pinches, seven warnings, and seven anything else that one 
can think of. Let me for the seventh time rouse the 
readers of The Cottage Gardener anent the Tritoma. 
If you buy a packet of the seeds at once, pay for it in 
ready money, sow it the next day, or any day from that 
day to the last day of February, and treat the seedlings 
as hereinunder mentioned, you will have them up in 
bloom, as sure as the Bank of England, by the middle of 
next September—a fact that was not known in gardening 
last week. Here, then, is a grand secret for “ Mac ” of 
Dundee, for Mr. Buddock, of York Cemetery, for lords, 
ladies, and gentlemen, and for their gardeners, friends, 
and neighbours; and if Tritoma uvaria be not seen in every 
parish in the three kingdoms before next Michaelmas, 
it must be for want of plants and seeds to supply the 
enormous demand that is sure and certain to be made for 
it early in the spring. The plants cannot be one farthing 
cheaper for some years than they are at the present 
moment, and the seeds will never be cheaper. It is only | 
losing time and caste, therefore, to wait one moment 
longer; for now there is not the slightest doubt about 
the fact that this will be the most, and the most de¬ 
servedly fashionable plant for some years to come. It 
will also be the newest pot plant for the exhibitions at 
Kensington Gore. 
What I have been suggesting all along about pots and 
pot-saucers for it were then facts accomplished, though 
not known to many. One thousand plants of it from seeds 
saved in London, as it w T ere, have flowered within the last 
two or three years ; and only ten or tw'elve plants out of 
the lot varied lighter in the colour of the flowers than the 
parent—but as many, or more, of these seedlings had 
deeper-coloured flowers. 
There are three kinds or varieties of Uvaria ; the best 
of the three, the freest bloomer, and the most given to 
suckers, is the one they have at Kew, w hich is the same as 
my stock ; and my stock came originally from Mr. Niven, 
of the BotanicGarden,Hull, under the name of T.hybrida; 
but in the “Illustrated Bouquet,” whex-e a splendidly 
coloured figure of it is given, it is called variety ylauces- 
cens; and the three forms of it ai'e there described, also 
a digest of all the species and the best ways to grow them. 
I have a letter about them from a practical botanist—a 
gardener who lives under the weight of having to manage 
the most celebrated garden in the kingdom for one par¬ 
ticular branch ; but I must not name the branch, for the 
letter was a px’ivate one, and the bx*anch would tell the tale. 
He says, “You have said much about Tritoma uvaria. 
I have three varieties of it. The true one makes very 
few suckei’s.” And let me say that that is just the reason 
why the time one is a seedei’, and the two that sucker so 
abundantly do not seed at all. I looked over all the 
plants of it at Kew, or glaucescens, last autumn with 
Mr. Craig, and I believe we got four or five seeds—the 
whole crop from hundreds, if not from a thousand spikes 
of it; while over at Old Bi’ompton, not four miles off, 
almost every flower on every spike ripened seeds, and 
these very seeds were advertised in November in The 
Cottage Gardener. 
My fx-iend of the celebrated branch goes on to say, 
“ The Kew variety, or glaucescens, suckers free!}'; variety 
serotina flowers paler on opening, but continues till the 
end of November, when the colour becomes much dai’ker 
and is then splendid. I have also Tritoma Rooperi, | 
which blooms with me in August, and T. Rurchellii, I 
which comes in flower in July ; also T. media in abund- j 
ance; but I want pumila very much. Of all the rest I 
can spare you plants for your Experimental Garden.” 
That is the right sort of bill for Christmas; and, as sure 
as fate, the family will some day “break,” and bi’eed 
interlaced and cross bi’eed, and they will have Cyrtanthus- 
like lines of it in ribbon-borders from May to October. 
“ The true one makes very few suckers,” says my 
friend of that branch. “ The true one has seeded witlx 
me freely these three years; and I have grown and 
flowered above one thousand plants of it from seeds, and 
they come vexy true—not more than ten or twelve were 
lighter than the parent, and some were better,” says Mr. 
James Marcham, of EaiTs Coui't Road, Old Brompton, 
London—the very man who advertised it in The Cottage 
Gardener, and who was so good as to put me on the 
right scent about it, and whom I have advised to adver¬ 
tise once more, as I had plenty of customers for it. 
He also very kindly sent me a postscript for “ Mac,” 
of Dundee, and for Mr. Ruddock, of York, about how to 
get it to flower the first year from seeds. “The seed 
was sown in a greenhouse in February, and planted out 
in the open gi’ound in May between rows of Strawberx-ies, 
and flowered in September, 1858.” And for the inform¬ 
ation of us all about growing them in pots, Mr. Mai’cham 
writes, “ I have flowered them in 24-sized pots this year, 
with from three to four spikes to each plant. Next year 
I expect to have from ten to twenty spikes of bloom in 
No. 12-pots. I have one plant in my garden which was 
but one single stem in 1856 ; in 1857 it had six spikes ; 
in 1858 it had twenty-six spikes ; and this last season it 
had fifty-seven spikes on.” 
Mr. Marcham did not say if he were a florist, a nur¬ 
seryman, or a private gentleman, who had overstocked 
his gai’den with these plants, and wished to sell out to 
make room for seedlings. But the first thing I did was 
to send for a shilling packet of his Tritoma-seeds, and I 
shall sow them the moment they l’each me. I was not 
aware that they could be had in bloom the first year 
fi'om seed ; and probably there are not six gardeners 
among us all who could say that seedlings of Tritoma 
would flower sooner than Tulip seedlings, which some¬ 
times take seven years to bloom ; but here we shall have 
them, like annuals, flowering the same year they ai'e 
sown. But all will not be so lucky. In a great family 
like ours some of the membei’s will be sure to have bad 
luck from the cradle to the grave. Some will be be¬ 
witched ; and no matter what they take in hand, it will 
not prosper like that of their neighbours ; yet there is a 
way to help them, too, besides that of setting charms. 
This is from a tribe of plants with which I began my 
career in experimenting early in life, and I can vouch 
for it that it is just as safe to sow the seeds of all these 
Tritomas the very day they are ripe in September or 
October as it would be in April or May. That is the 
nature of all their kindred without one exception as far 
as we have tried them. Therefore the first thing to 
ensure an annual and a regular crop of seeds, is to procure 
some plants of the old true species, which seeds freely, to 
watch the seeds in the autumn, and when they are ripe 
to Sow them at once in pots or boxes ; to place these in a 
cold frame or under a w r all till the frost comes, when they 
should have the protection of a cold pit; and to be kept 
all the winter along w ith cuttings of Verbenas, Calceo- 
laiflas, or with any other of the hardiest of bedding stuff; 
and at the end of March to have the seedlings potted 
s i n nly> or three or four of them in a larger pot, and to 
nurse them exactly like seedling blue Lobelias till plant¬ 
ing-out time in May ; then to plant them in rows in the 
kitchen garden, where the Cauliflower or Broccoli would 
do, and to select the best-coloui’ed flowers for the flower 
garden. 
Those who are expert at the rearing of seedlings and 
have the aid of a greenhouse may do as Mr. Marcham 
has done—sow the seeds now or next February, and place 
them near the front glass at the warmest end, and. I 
should say, supply them liberally with water after the 
leaves are two or three inches high. But dashing young 
gardeners, and the go-a-head of our old fraternity, will 
rattle them on in heat sufficiently to ensure a strong l’oot- 
stock before planting-out time. They w ill also know how 
much rain or liquid manure they can bear, and these men 
