Specific Character and Synonyms.

Under the name of Spiderwort, the old Botanists arranged many plants of very different genera: the name is said to have arisen from the supposed efficacy of some of these plants, in curing the bite of a kind of spider, called Phalangium; not the Phalangium of Linnæus, which is known to be perfectly harmless: under this name, Parkinson minutely describes it; he mentions also, how he first obtained it.

"This Spiderwort," says our venerable author, "is of late knowledge, and for it the Christian world is indebted unto that painful, industrious searcher, John Tradescant, who first received it of a friend that brought it out of Virginia, and hath imparted hereof, as of many other things, both to me and others."

Tournefort afterwards gave it the name of Ephemerum, expressive of the short duration of its flowers, which Linnæus changed to Tradescantia.

Though a native of Virginia, it bears the severity of our climate uninjured, and being a beautiful, as well as hardy perennial, is found in almost every garden.

Though each blossom lasts but a day, it has such a profusion in store, that it is seldom found without flowers through the whole of the summer. There are two varieties of it, the one with white the other with pale purple flowers. The most usual way of propagating it is by parting its roots in autumn to obtain varieties, we must sow its seeds.

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The Candy-Tuft is one of those annuals which contribute generally to enliven the borders of the flower-garden: its usual colour is a pale purple, there is also a white variety of it, and another with deep but very bright purple flowers, the most desirable of the three, but where a garden is large enough to admit of it, all the varieties may be sown.

For want of due discrimination, as Miller has before observed, Nurserymen are apt to collect and mix with this species the seeds of another, viz. the amara, and which persons not much skilled in plants consider as the white variety; but a slight attention will discover it to be a very different plant, having smaller and longer heads, differing also in the shape of its leaves and seed vessels, too trifling a plant indeed to appear in the flower-garden.

Purple Candy-Tuft is a native of the South of Europe, and flowers in June and July: it should be sown in the spring, on the borders of the flower-garden in patches; when the plants come up, a few only should be left, as they will thereby become stronger, produce more flowers, and be of longer duration.

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A native of the West-Indies, and of Virginia according to Linnæus; not common in our gardens, though cultivated as long ago as 1699, by the Duchess of Beaufort; (vid. Hort. Kew.) unnoticed by Miller.

This species, superior in beauty to many of the genus, is an annual, and consequently raised only from seeds, these must be sown in the spring, on a hot-bed, and when large enough to transplant, placed separately in pots of light loamy earth, then replunged into a moderate hot-bed to bring them forward, and in the month of June removed into a warm border, where, if the season prove favourable, they will flower very well towards August; but, as such seldom ripen their seeds, it will be proper to keep a few plants in the stove or greenhouse for that purpose, otherwise the species may be lost.

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An annual; the spontaneous growth of Spain, Italy, and Sicily, flowers in the open border in July, and ripens its seeds, in September.

Long since cultivated in our gardens, but more as a rare, or curious, than a beautiful plant.

Its seeds are to be sown in April, on a bed of light earth, where they are to remain; no other care is necessary than thinning them, and keeping them clear of weeds.

INDEX.

INDEX.