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| prepared for their reception. 
412 TEASEL. 
jurious. From 1,500 to 2,000 heads of teasel are 
required for dressing one piece of cloth; and 
they are repeatedly used in different parts of the 
process. 
The soil suitable for the field cultivation of 
fuller’s teasel requires to be of rather strong tex- 
ture or a rich superior loam, and to be in a state 
of very fine tilth and of thorough cleanness. A 
practice prevails in some places of raising teasel 
in a three years’ course along with coriander and 
caraway; but this practice is seldom so good as 
that of raising the teasel alone. See the article 
Caraway. In March, land intended for teasel is 
brought into the highest possible state of tilth; 
about May-day, the seed is sown, either broad-cast 
or in drills, at the rate of from one to two pecks 
per acre ; during the summer, the land is three or 
four different times worked over with long, nar- 
row spades, to destroy all weeds; in November, 
the plants are adjusted by thinnings and fillings- 
up to distances of about a foot asunder; and if 
many more plants are taken up in the thinnings 
than are wanted in the fillings-up, they are trans- 
planted on another piece of ground, previously 
The broad-cast 
method was formerly in general use; but the 
| drill system is now found preferable, and possesses 
these two among other advantages, that it saves 
| about one-fourth of the seed, and that it effects 
| greater regularity in the original distances or 
saves much of the labour and cost of thinning 
and transplanting,—together with the incidental 
| advantage, that plants which are never removed 
produce better heads than those which are trans-. 
planted. In the July of next year, the upper- 
most heads begin to bloom; and in. the following 
month, they lose their blossom and become ripe. 
The gathering is performed at three successive 
periods, at intervals of about a fortnight, by 
means of a peculiarly constructed knife; and 
consists in cutting off the heads and tying them 
into handfuls. The cut heads require to be 
carefully kept from exposure to rain, and care- 
fully and regularly dried; and either they are 
suspended in temporary sheds erected for the 
purpose in the field, or they are carried direct to 
the barn, and brought out and exposed to the 
sun on every clear dry day; and when they have 
become quite dried, they are separated into three 
kinds called kings, middlings, and. scrubs, and 
made into packs of each 9,000 kings and 20,000 
middlings,—the scrubs being of small value. An 
| average or pretty good crop yields about 15 or 
16 packs per acre; but a prime crop far exceeds 
this, and a very bad crop may be a total blank. 
The wood or wild teasel, Dipsacus sylvestris, is 
very common about the moist hedges and road 
sides of some parts of Britain; and has been 
thought by some persons the normal or typal 
form, or remote origin, of the fuller’s teasel. It 
is nearly or quite as tall as that species, but less 
robust. Its leaves are opposite and serrated ; its 
flowers resemble those of the fuller’s teasel, and 
seeds ; 
~‘TECOMA. - 
bloom about the same period; its receptacle- 
scales are straight ; and its common calyx is in-, 
flexed and longer than the head. 
The small teasel, or pilose teasel, or shepherd’s 
staff, Dipsacus pilosus, grows wild in moist shady, 
places upon a calcareous soil. It is a useless but 
not troublesome weed; and it at the same time 
possesses sufficient beauty to deserve a place in 
the back-rows of the flower-border. Its stem is 
angular, leafy, branched, rough, with ascending 
hooked bristles, and 3 or 4 feet high ; its branches 
are spreading ; its leaves are stalked, ternate, ovate, 
pointed, strongly serrated, and of a deep green 
colour; its flowers grow in small globular heads, 
and have a white colour, and bloom in August; 
and its common calyx is deflexed and about the 
same length as the head. 
TEATHING. Eating off turnips, upon young 
wheat crops, in the early parts of spring, by, sheep 
or bullocks. 
TEA-TREE. See Tua. , 
TECOMA. A genus of ornamental, ligneous, 
exotic plants, of the trumpet-flower order. It 
comprises one hardy deciduous climber, of com-. 
monly about 30 feet in height, three somewhat 
tender evergreen climbers of 8 or 12 feet in 
height, one greenhouse deciduous upright’ shrub 
of about 6. feet in height, and 8 hothouse ever-. 
green upright shrubs of from 6 to 12 feet inheight ;. 
and all these occur in British collections,—about 
one half were formerly included in the genus big- 
nonia,—most have either yellow or orange-col- 
oured flowers,—and the greater number love a 
soil of peaty loam, and are propagated from cut- 
tings. 
The rooting tecoma, or scarlet trumpet-flower, 
T. radicans, called by the old botanists Bagnonia. 
radicans, is the hardy climbing species, the best 
known one, and the most interesting. It is a 
native of Carolina, Virginia, and Canada; and. 
was introduced to Britain in 1640; and has long 
been regarded by the most eminent British gar- 
deners, and by landscape gardeners, as a plant of. 
surpassing beauty. Its stem climbs to an amaz- 
ing height upon advantageously situated edifices 
or trees, and strikes roots from the joints into 
whatever. is near it; its leaves grow opposite. 
by pairs at the joints, and are pinnate, and com- 
prise each about four pairs of leaflets and a ter- 
minating odd one; its leaflets have a fine green 
colour, and. are deeply cut in the edges, and 
drawn out into a long point; and its flowers 
come out: in bunches at the ends of the branches, 
and are large and trumpet-shaped, and have a 
fine red colour, often approaching to orange, and 
bloom in July and August, and make a magnifi- 
cent show:—A smaller variety, 7’. 7. manor, dif- 
fers from the normal plant, in the comparative 
smallness of the leaves and the flowers, and in 
the less tendency of the latter toward an orange 
colour, or in their having a purer and brighter 
red.—Both kinds may be raised, tediously, from 
or, more expeditiously, from cuttings of 
a 
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