1 
NEW AND RARE PLANTS. 
The Cissus discolor is a plant of easy culture, and will be found to grow well in equal parts of light 
turfy loam and peat, adding a little leaf soil, with sufficient coarse gritty sand, to keep the compost 
porous. Let it be well drained with large crocks, covering them over with rough turfy peat. 
Drainage made with the crocks broken small, soon becomes choked up. It is Avorse than useless for 
any plant after it has been removed from a three-inch pot. 
This, plant requires a high temperature, and must therefore be placed in the hottest part of the 
stove or orchid house, and shading must be particularly attended to on bright days. This latter is 
essentially requisite in order to produce that intensity of colour which makes it so charming. Most 
plants require strong solar light to bring out their colours to perfection, but the one under considera¬ 
tion is an exception, which is readily accounted for by tracing the plant to its natural habitat, where 
the sun is scarcely able to dart his fiery rays through the dense mass of luxuriant vegetation by which 
it is surrounded, but whose burning heat, acting on the saturated moss-clad soil, causes a thick vapour 
to exhale, which is highly congenial to vegetable life, but far 
otherwise to the botanical rambler, who may prolong his 
stay among these unhealthy shades. 
The plant is admirably adapted for training up a pillar, 
or on the end walls, or divisions of the stove. If trained up 
the rafters the young shoots must be allowed to hang down, 
or the effect would be partially destroyed by the surface of 
the leaves turning to the roof, instead of facing the observer’s 
eye. It is also equally suitable for pot culture, and in this 
case any trellis may be used that taste may suggest; pro¬ 
bably one of upright pillar-like form will be found to be as 
suitable for displaying its varied tints as any that may be 
devised. 
As the autumn approaches, the supply of water must be 
gradually diminished, and the plant kept rather dry from 
November till February, allowing it only just sufficient water 
to keep the roots healthy. This partial rest will enable it 
to start into growth with renewed vigour in the following 
spring, when the former treatment may be resumed. It has 
not yet flowered, and is at present only in the Tooting Nur¬ 
sery.—H. Buckley, Tooting . 
Tetratheca Ericaefolia. —We are obliged to Messrs. 
Henderson of the Pine Apple Nursery for the means of illus¬ 
trating this pretty greenhouse shrub, originally introduced 
in 1820, but long since lost, and now reintroduced by the 
agency of Mr. Drummond. It is an evergreen sub-shrub, 
with erect branches, bearing linear heath-like leaves, which, 
on the more perfectly developed portions of the plant, grow 
five or six in a whorl, but are sometimes scattered; they are 
re volute, with scabrous margins. From the axils of the 
leaves towards the end of the branches the nodding flowers are produced, so as to form leafy spikes 
of blossom; they consist of a calyx of four ovate acutish sepals, and a corolla of an equal number 
of oblong obtuse pinkish-lilac petals; the anthers are dark-coloured, tipped with yellow, and open by 
a tubular orifice at the apex. The flowers have a very agreeable scent, resembling that of Cyclamen 
yersicum: and, altogether, this is a greenhouse shrub deserving of extensive culture. It belongs to 
the order Tremandraceae. 
TETRATHECA ERICJSFOLIA. 
