THE ÉTAGÈRE GARDEN.
Gardening on the Étagère.--Succulent Plants.--Peculiarities
of their Organization.--Dwarf Succulent Plants.--Quantity
of Earth of which they have need.--Aliments that they draw
from the Air.--Cactus.--Opuntias, (Prickly Pear.)--Melocacti,
(Melon Thistle.)--Echinocacti.[3]--How the Goats of Jamaica
make them drop their thorns.--Stapelias.--Strange Shape of
the Flower.--Its Smell.--Proof of the Sense of Smell in
Flies.--Sedums.--Mesembryanthemums.--Ice Plants.--Crassulas.--Culture
of Dwarf Succulent Plants.--Necessity of depriving them of Water
during their Sleep.
Gardening on the Étagère.
It is but a few years since the fashion of _étagères_ has become
general. People began by covering them with all sorts of curiosities
and specimens of natural history--a custom which exists still. Then
they fabricated out of wire, gilt, silvered or bronzed, charming little
_étagères_ in open work, which took up little room, could be hung up
any where, and hold a whole collection of little ornamental plants.
This series of plants belongs, for the most part, to an order of
vegetation having a very peculiar organization, and endowed with
extraordinary vital energy. They are commonly called _succulent_
plants, and are remarkable for the thickness of their fleshy and
persistent leaves. Among a great many of these plants, the stalk and
the leaves are one and the same organ: the leaves, when leaves exist,
fulfil the functions of the stalk; and reciprocally, when the leaves
are wanting, their vegetative duties are fulfilled by the stalk.
Dwarf Succulent Plants.
You have no idea, my dear madam, how much skill and patience the
horticulturists by profession have displayed in dwarfing these pretty
plants; some of which, when left to follow their own notions, in their
native country, attain to colossal dimensions.
[Illustration: Fig. 2.--Etagère with dwarf succulent plants.]
Quantity of Earth requisite for Dwarf Succulent Plants.
A fact which, above all others, must strike us in examining a
collection of dwarf succulent plants, is the extremely small quantity
of earth allowed to them. Of those which come most properly under
this head, some will live in pots of the size of an ordinary tumbler;
whilst others are cooped up in still narrower lodgings, their domicile
not exceeding the dimensions of a small wine glass. It is because
in general the succulent plants, dwarfed or not, scarcely live by
their roots. Then, you will say, on what do they live? They sustain
themselves on an aliment with which neither you nor I would content
ourselves; they live on the air of the heavens--literally, and without
rhetorical figure. By the way, permit me to remark to you, that all
plants, without exception, live more or less on the air; even those
which derive the greater part of their nourishment from the earth.
Suppose some immense tree felled, split, and cut up into small pieces,
and converted into charcoal; it would make an enormous mass of it. Do
you imagine that the tree could have drawn this mass of carbon from
the soil where it grew, which does not contain a particle of carbon
in its composition? No, it drew this material from the atmosphere, by
decomposing the air with its leaves. That is what our pretty little
dwarf succulent plants do; and without this faculty, which they possess
in a very high degree, they would not live.
Cactus--Opuntias.
Consider first those which belong to the numerous and strange family of
the cactuses; all of them natives of the warmest parts of America. See
the opuntias, whose leaf-stems, or stem-leaves, whichever you please
to call them, have the form of so many battledoors placed alongside of
each other. These little plants represent to you in miniature those on
which, in Mexico and in the Island of Madeira, lives the insect called
_cochineal_, that furnishes to dyers and painters their finest red,
under the name of _carmine_; from which also, by the by, is made that
_rouge_ which occasionally serves in giving color to the complexion
of ladies towards whom mother Nature was stingy when she painted their
cheeks. I do not mean, however, my dear young ladies, to intimate that
this was, by any means, the case with either of you.
Melocacti and Echinocacti.
To the same family belong also the melocacti and echinocacti. Their
rounded forms composed of prominent ridges, their pretty crown of
little satiny flowers, of a fine golden yellow, resemble those of no
other family. In the mountains of the interior of Brazil, and in those
of the centre of the Island of Jamaica, these same plants,--plants of
the same species,--that you here see reduced to such exceedingly small
proportions, grow upon the slopes of the most arid rocks, and become
very large. Knowing this, you will understand that their bunches of
thorns, inoffensive in the dwarfed plants because of their minute
size, constitute defensive weapons whereby they are preserved from
the teeth of animals. Nevertheless, these arms prove useless to them
against the wily attacks of the numerous herds of goats kept by the
English colonists of Jamaica. The goats, animals essentially climbers
by nature, climb up the most abrupt declivities of the rocks covered
with melocacti and echinocacti. There, using their horns for the
purpose, they root up these plants, and roll them down into the valley,
where, as a preparation for eating them, they play with them as a child
would play with a toy balloon, until, by dint of rolling and tossing
them about on the pebbles, the thorns have been all shaken out. Then
the goats are able to feast upon them without damage to their mouths,
just as though the thorns of the colossal cactuses were as little to
be dreaded as are these downy representatives of those hard and tough
spikes, produced by their sisters in miniature.
Stapelias.
There are other plants, of a different family, but the forms of which
recall those of the cactuses: these are the stapelias. You will not
fail to remark their strange flowers--thick, fleshy, violaceous, set
with rough hairs, and having the form of a star. Do not approach too
near this plant while it is in flower; for its odor is not agreeable.
This peculiarity, however, should not induce you to exclude it
from your _étagère_, where it will be very well placed, because of
the singularity of its form. As to its smell,--which is not strong
enough to incommode you,--I should not have mentioned it, but for the
circumstance of its having caused this flower to be mistaken for a very
different thing by the flies called flesh-flies; which mistake has
given rise to quite a curious observation in natural history.
Have flies noses? you will say, ladies.
I must acknowledge that I do not know whether they have or have not
noses; although entomology, together with botany, are my favorite
studies. This much, however, I do know--that they have the sense of
smell. That this is certain you can ascertain for yourselves, by having
a stapelia in bloom upon your _étagère_. The flower of the stapelia
smells like meat that has been kept too long; and flesh-flies, who
lay their eggs on spoiled meat, are attracted to this flower by its
smell. These eggs give birth to worms destined to become flies in
their turn. If you shut flesh-flies up in a chamber where there is a
stapelia flower, they will come and lay eggs on this flower, taking
it for flesh--an error which they cannot be led into by the sense of
sight, for the stapelia flower does not resemble in any respect a piece
of meat. Consequently this mistake can only arise from their being
deceived by the smell; from which fact naturalists draw the conclusion,
not that they have noses, but that they have the sense of smell.
Sedums and Mesembryanthemums.
There is another family of plants, no less various, no less rich in
pretty and copiously flowering species, than the cactus family itself.
These are the sedums; among which I have already made you acquainted
with the pretty, yellow, star-flowered sedum, (stone-crop,) which
blooms without earth and without water, suspended by a thread to the
wall of a room.
Another species, that of the mesembryanthemums,--with numerous flowers
of all the shades of red, from the color of fire to the palest
rose,--belongs also to the series of succulent plants. The prettiest
varieties have been rendered dwarf by the horticulture of our day. If
their name--a little long and a little learned--seems disagreeable to
you to pronounce, call them plainly _ice-plants_. This is the common
name of the variety that is the most extensively cultivated, and the
leaves of which, with the stalk also, are powdered white, as if covered
with frost.
There are also the crassulas, with their leaves elegantly imbricated,
and their little bunches of flowers of the deepest red. You will find
some, also, of a pale rose-color. Both are as perfect in form, and as
brilliant in color, as the same plants are in their natural dimensions,
of half a yard or more in height.
I pass over some of the best. But when you have made your choice among
the prettiest dwarf varieties of cactuses--of the kinds of opuntia,
melocactus, echinocactus,--and when you have added to these stapelias,
sedums, ice-plants, and crassulas, confining yourself to the finest
varieties,--you will have not only a sufficiency to decorate your
_étagère_, even if it be a large one, but also enough to fill an
elegant basket, which will produce the best effect in the middle of
your stand. And then, during more than half of the year, you will
constantly have some of your dwarf succulent plants covered with pretty
flowers.
Culture of the Dwarf Succulent Plants.
It only remains to give you some hints about the way of managing
them. For this purpose it is necessary to say a few words about their
temperament. Cactuses, in their native country, bear excessive heat
and dryness for six or seven months without interruption, followed by
deluges of rain. The most violent storm-rains in our latitudes afford
but a very faint idea of those tropical deluges. During the dry season,
the vegetative life of the cactuses is almost quite suspended. Their
sleep is then much more profound than that of the plants with us which
lose their leaves in winter. Now, from the knowledge of these facts,
we perceive what sort of management is most suitable for them. All
those which give no sign of active vegetation--on which neither young
shoots nor flower buds make their appearance--ought to be watered
only once a week. You may abstain altogether from watering them;
there will be neither more nor less budding for it when the proper
time comes. Continue the same treatment if, at the return of warm
weather, the cactuses show no signs of flowering: leave them dry a
month or two; they will not die for it--no danger of this. When they
begin spontaneously to vegetate, begin to water them with water of the
temperature of the room; at first moderately, afterwards a little more
freely, but never to excess. The floods of rain that they get in their
native country do not hurt them there, because the tropical climate
renders evaporation rapid. It would not be the same in your house. The
quantity should be, a tablespoonful of water for the pots of the size
of a tumbler, and a teaspoonful for those the size of a wine-glass.
Necessity of depriving them of Water during their Sleep.
That you may perfectly understand the necessity of not watering your
cactuses during the sleep of their vegetation, I will relate to you
what happened to a botanist, who, being extremely fond of cactuses, had
a very fine collection of them. A friend sent him a box of cactuses
from the province of Minas Geraes, in Brazil, which he hastened to put
in pots in his conservatory, and at the same time put by in a drawer a
double set of specimens, which he proposed to make presents of. Forced
to set out on a long journey, he forgot the cactuses in his drawer;
and on his return home, after an absence of several months, he found
them there, faded, withered, in so deplorable a state that he thought
them lost. Nevertheless, he planted them, and began to water them by
degrees. All recovered and flowered abundantly; while those which had
been planted, and taken care of ever since their arrival, only flowered
in part; many did not flower at all. His gardener had been afraid of
letting them suffer from thirst, and had given them too much to drink.
Keep in mind, then, ladies, that in order that your cactuses may bloom,
it is necessary that the periodic sleep of their vegetation should be
complete; and that it cannot be so if they be watered at the wrong
time. As to temperature, they are of a temperament that accommodates
itself very well with what suits yourself. When they bloom during the
warm weather, put the _étagère_ before the open window some hours every
day; your cactuses will be the better for it; their bloom will be more
brilliant and of longer duration.
The stapelias must be treated like the cactuses--no difference. The
other succulent plants require a little more water in winter; their
sleep being never so absolute as that of the cactuses and stapelias.
Nevertheless, if you would have them to flower well when they wake,
let them sleep. Do not water them during their sleep, except when they
appear evidently to be suffering from thirst; and then give them only
just so much as is necessary to relieve their suffering.