158 
THE FLOEIST AND POMOLOGIST. 
[ July, 
fluted, and furnished with noble leaves set on in opposite pairs, large, so as to 
give grandeur and amplitude to the plant, but entirely removed from any appear¬ 
ance of coarseness. These leaves, which are conspicuously stalked, are ovate in 
outline, and divided in a bipinnatifid manner. They are often nearly three feet 
long, and when well grown form a truly grand and luxurious leafy mass. 
The plant is better known in English gardens under its synonym of Polymnia 
grandis , and it is also called Montagncea heracleifolia. For the summer garden 
it is best to employ young spring-struck plants, planting them out in June, when 
all danger of ungenial weather is past. If then put into good soil, and properly 
cared for, they grow away rapidly, and form magnificent plants long before the 
end of the season. Such young plants, both of this and the Wigandia, make 
much handsomer specimens than larger and older ones, which necessarily are 
more or less stunted before the}’- make a start into their summer growth. 
ON CURING AND STORING POT-HERBS. 
S HE Chinese, who are said to be surprised at our sending to China for 
Tea, when we have got Sage at home, would never think of using a 
f decoction of herbs dried and preserved after such a fashion as our little 
besoms of Sage-stalks, hanging from a rusty nail in a dusty shed. I 
paid Is. Gd. not very long ago for a few stalks of dried Basil of about three 
ounces’ weight, and I had to look closely to the habit of the plant to make 
sure of its identity, so much of the fragrant character being gone. Now whilst 
good Tea is to be had at 4s. per pound, and the market price of dried Basil 
is 8s. per pound, that is, twice the price of Tea, there is good reason for the 
customer to complain that he does not get Basil dried and kept in canisters or 
lead-lined boxes like Tea. But this is not all, for when you buy your Chinese 
Tea you get the leaves, and not the stalks along with them ; but when you get 
home-grown Basil, you get root and branch, for it is sold as plucked up by the 
root, and consequently its weight and bulk are increased by what is of no value 
to the consumer. 
Take, for another example, the Chamomile-flowers as you see them in a 
chemist’s window ; they are beautifully white and fragrant, no stalks, no dust, no 
waste; you get the dried flowers in perfection ; they are weighed before your 
eyes, and the price is as low as the vendor can afford to sell them at. They, too, 
are of home growth, but they had to be got into marketable condition before the 
chemist would buy them from the grower. 
Some 40 years ago, the gardener at Chiswick House—I think it was Mr. 
Lindsay—respected herbs : he collected the leaves, and pressed them in a flaccid 
state in a mould till they took the form of a flat flue-tile, when they were stove- 
dried or kiln-dried, and kept wrapped up in paper, neatly labelled. Mr. Lindsay 
used vapour baths, and herbs were largely employed in that way medicinally. 
I, for one, feel much obliged to him for putting me in the way to preserve herbs, 
for his system of pressing them into blocks preserved the flavour of the leaf, by 
having the smallest amount of outside exposed to the air. 
