SAN 
SPA 
approached too closely; they require 
little or no management after planting, 
and any of the shrubby kinds may be in¬ 
creased readily by cuttings of the ripen'et 
wood, taken off in spring, cut to five or 
six joints’ length, and stuck into moist 
ground. The root of S. ebulus is violently 
cathartic, the leaves are said to drive 
away mice, and the berries of this anc. 
all the other species dye blue or purple; 
most. of them have a strong narcotic 
principle, which may be experienced even 
on approaching them, and hence another 
reason why they should be kept at a 
distance. 
SANTOLINA, Lavender Cotton 
(Linn.) Nat. Ord. Composites. A small 
genus of little suffruticose plants, or 
under shrubs, for the most part having 
downy leaves and branches, the former 
toothed or warted at the edge; the 
flowers are yellow, freely produced, and 
as the plants grow in any soil without 
trouble, are worth a place in shrubbery 
borders, or among rockwork; they do 
not exceed a foot and a half, or two feet 
in height, and are easily propagated by 
cuttings taken off in autumn, and struck 
under a hand-glass, or by division of the 
roots. 
SHEPHERDIA (Mittall). N. Ord. 
Elceagnece. The two species of this genus 
are both natives of North America, and 
are closely allied to hippophae, or sea 
buckthorn, from which genus they were 
separated by Nuttale, and named in com¬ 
pliment to the. late Mr. W. Shepherd, 
curator of the Liverpool Botanic Gardens. 
They are rather low-growing trees, of 
inelegant rigid habit, remarkable chiefly 
for. their oblong, stellate, hairy leaves, 
which in argentea are quite white, and in 
canadensis brownish-white above, and 
scaly beneath. They grow best in 
gravelly soil, or, at least, one that is 
perfectly well drained, and may be oc¬ 
casionally employed to fill the fronts of 
considerable masses of trees, being of 
intermediate stature between them and 
the shrubs. They are each deciduous. 
SOPHORA (R. Brown). Nat. Ord. 
Leguminosce. Two species, S. chinensis 
and S. japonica , are handsome hardy trees, 
with pinnate leaves, the leaflets rounded, 
oblong, somewhat acute; the flowers are 
produced on terminal spikes, rather 
numerous, and pure white. There are 
two varieties of japonica, called variegata 
and pendiila , distinguished as their names 
imply,'the one by variegated foliage, and 
the other by a drooping habit. They are 
all very ornamental, and well suited for 
planting singly on lawns; a mixture of 
peat and loam, or loam and leaf-mould, 
suits them, and while young it is ad¬ 
visable to shelter the plants from exces¬ 
sive wet or cold, but as they attain a 
good size, this becomes unnecessary. 
Propagation is effected by seeds or layers: 
the first make the best plants when they 
can. be obtained, but the late period at 
which the trees bloom (August), and the 
usual wet character of our autumns, 
render their production in a perfect state 
very uncertain. On this account nur¬ 
serymen generally keep dwarf plants, or 
“stools,” as they are termed: the current 
season’s growth of these is laid down 
with a tongue in October, and they make 
plants fit for removal by the following 
autumn; much care, however, is neces¬ 
sary to induce these layers to grow erect, 
for, like most other lateral growths, their 
natural disposition to push in a horizontal 
direction requires much correction; such 
plants, however, generally bloom at an 
earlier age than those produced from 
seed. 
SPARTIUM, Spanish Broom (Linn.) 
Nat. Ord. Leguminosce. This genus, as 
at present constituted, contains but one 
species, S. junceum and its varieties. 
Formerly our iudigenous broom, and 
several others to the number of twenty, 
were included in it, these have been dis¬ 
tributed between Cytisus and Genista , 
and we have now but four plants to treat 
of under this head; they are S. junceum , 
die true Spanish broom, and its varieties; 
acutifolium, the narrow-leaved broom; 
flore pleno , the double-flowering broom ; 
and odoratissimum, the sweet-scented 
broom. A similarity of habit is ob¬ 
servable in all, and each has yellow 
flowers. The new branches are round 
and rush-like, the leaves lanceolate, the 
flowers produced from near the end of 
the branches, and the entire plant a 
