SECTION VI.

VINES AND CLIMBING PLANTS.

Value of this kind of Vegetation. Fine natural effects. The European Ivy. The Virginia Creeper. The Wild Grape Vine. The Bittersweet. The Trumpet Creeper. The Pipe Vine, and the Clematis. The Wistarias. The Honeysuckles and Woodbines. The Jasmine and the Periploca. Remarks on the proper mode of introducing vines. Beautiful effects of climbing plants in connexion with buildings.

Quite over-canopied with lush woodbine,
With sweet musk roses, and with eglantine.

SHAKSPEARE.

INES and climbing plants are objects full of interest for the Landscape Gardener, for they seem endowed with the characteristics of the graceful, the beautiful, and the picturesque, in their luxuriant

and ever-varying forms. When judiciously introduced, therefore, nothing can so easily give a spirited or graceful air to a fine or even an ordinary scene, as the various plants which compose this group of the vegetable kingdom. We refer particularly now to those which have woody and perennial stems, as all annual or herbaceous stemmed plants are too short-lived to afford any lasting or permanent addition to the beauty of the lawn or pleasure-ground.

Climbing plants may be classed among the adventitious beauties of trees. Who has not often witnessed with delight in our native forests, the striking beauty of a noble tree, the old trunk and fantastic branches of which were enwreathed with the luxuriant and pliant shoots and rich foliage of some beautiful vine, clothing even its decayed limbs with verdure, and hanging down in gay festoons or loose negligent masses, waving to and fro in the air. The European Ivy (Hedera Helix) is certainly one of the finest, if not the very finest climbing plant (or more properly, creeping vine, for by means of its little fibres or rootlets on the stems, it will attach itself to trees, walks, or any other substance), with which we are acquainted. It possesses not only very fine dark green palmated foliage in great abundance, but the foliage has that agreeable property of being evergreen,—which, while it enhances its value tenfold, is at the same time so rare among vines. The yellow flowers of the Ivy are great favorites with bees, from their honied sweetness; they open in autumn, and the berries ripen in the spring. When planted at the root of a tree, it will often, if the head is not too thickly clad with branches, ascend to the very topmost limbs; and its dark green foliage, wreathing itself about the old and furrowed trunk, and hanging in careless drapery from the lower branches, adds greatly to the elegance of even the most admirable tree. Spenser describes the appearance of the Ivy growing to the tops of the trees,

Emongst the rest, the clamb'ring Ivie grew,
Knitting his wanton arms with grasping hold,

Lest that the poplar happely should renew

Her brother's strokes, whose boughs she doth enfold
With her lythe twigs, till they the top survew,

And paint with pallid green her buds of gold."

The fine contrasts between the dark coloring of the leaves of the Ivy, and the vernal and autumnal tints of the foliage of deciduous trees, are also highly pleasing. Indeed this fine climbing plant may be turned to advantage in another way; in reclothing dead trees with verdure. Sir T. D. Lauder says, that "trees often die from causes which we cannot divine, and there is no one who is master of extensive woods, who does not meet with many such instances of unexpected and unaccountable mortality. Of such dead individuals we have often availed ourselves, and by planting Ivy at their roots, we have converted them into more beautiful objects than they were when arrayed in their own natural foliage."

The Ivy is not only ornamental upon trees, but it is also remarkably well adapted to ornament cottages, and even large mansions, when allowed to grow upon the walls, to which it will attach itself so firmly by the little rootlets sent out from the branches, that it is almost impossible to tear it off. On wooden buildings, it may perhaps be injurious, by causing them to decay; but on stone buildings, it fastens itself firmly, and holds both stone and mortar together like a coat of cement. The thick garniture of foliage with which it covers the surface, excludes stormy weather, and has, therefore, a tendency to preserve the walls, rather than accelerate their decay. This vine is the inseparable accompaniment of the old feudal castles and crumbling towers of Europe, and borrows a great additional interest from the romance and historical recollections connected with such spots. Indeed half the interest, picturesque as well as poetical, of those time-worn buildings, is conferred by this plant, which seeks to bind together and adorn with something

of their former richness, the crumbling fragments that are fast tottering to decay:—

"The Ivy, that staunchest and firmest friend,

That hastens its succoring arm to lend

To the ruined fane where in youth it sprung,

And its pliant tendrils in sport were flung.

When the sinking buttress and mouldering tower
Seem only the spectres of former power,

Then the Ivy clusters round the wall,

And for tapestry hangs in the moss-grown hall,
Striving in beauty and youth to dress

The desolate place in its loneliness."

ROMANCE OF NATURE.

The Ivy lives to a great age, if we may judge from the specimens that overrun some of the oldest edifices of Europe, which are said to have been covered with it for centuries, and where the main stems are seen nearly as large as the trunk of a middle sized tree.

"Whole ages have fled, and their works decayed,

And nations have scattered been;

But the stout old Ivy shall never fade

From its hale and hearty green;

The brave old plant in its lonely days,

Shall fatten upon the past;

For the stateliest building man can raise,
Is the Ivy's food at last."

The Ivy is not a native of America; nor is it by any means a very common plant in our gardens, though we know of no apology for the apparent neglect of so beautiful a climber. It is hardy south of the latitude of 42°, and we have seen it thriving in great luxuriance as far north as Hyde Park, on the Hudson, eighty miles above New York. One of the most beautiful growths of this plant, which has

ever met our eyes, is that upon the old mansion in the Botanic Garden at Philadelphia, built by the elder Bartram. That picturesque and quaint stone building is beautifully overrun by the most superb mantle of Ivy, that no one who has once seen can fail to remember with admiration. The dark grey of the stone-work is finely opposed by the rich verdure of the plant, which falls away in openings here and there, around the windows, and elsewhere. It never thrives well if suffered to ramble along the ground, but needs the support of a tree, a frame, or a wall, to which it attaches itself firmly, and grows with vigorous shoots. Bare walls or fences may thus be clothed with verdure and beauty equal to the living hedge, in a very short period of time, by planting young Ivy roots at the base.

The most desirable varieties of the common Ivy are: the Irish Ivy, with much larger foliage than the common sort, and more rapid in its growth; the Silver-striped and the Gold-striped leaved Ivy, both of which, though less vigorous, are much admired for the singular color of their leaves. The common English Ivy is more hardy than the others in our climate.

Although, as we have said, the Ivy is not a native of this country, yet we have an indigenous vine, which, at least in summer, is not inferior to it. We refer to the Virginia Creeper (Ampelopsis hederacea), which is often called the American Ivy. The leaves are as large as the hand, deeply divided into five lobes, and the blossoms are succeeded by handsome, dark blue berries. The Virginia Creeper is a most luxuriant grower, and we have seen it climbing to the extremities of trees 70 or 80 feet in height. Like the Ivy it attaches itself to whatever it can lay hold of, by the little rootlets which spring out of the branches;