The cordate leaved Manettia, M. cordifolia is a very beautiful, half hardy, summer flowering, twining or climbing vine, belonging to the natural order Cinchonaceae.

It is a native of Buenos Ayres, where it was discovered by Mr. Tweedie, who sent seed of it to a friend in Scotland, and where it first flowered in 1832.

It is a twining or climbing plant growing from ten to fifteen feet in height and having opposite shining green leaves about two inches in length, and the flowers are produced in the greatest profusion during the late summer and early autumn months. The flowers, which are of a bright scarlet color and about two inches in length, are produced from the axils of the leaves in such profusion as to almost cover the entire plant. And when we consider the ease with which the plant can be grown, we cannot but regret that it is so rarely seen in cultivation at the present time.

This Manettia is a plant easily cultivated, doing best when grown in a deep, well enriched soil, and it should be well mulched and copiously watered during our hot, dry, summer weather. It can be planted outside about the 10th of May, and should be taken up and potted as soon as its foliage is destroyed by frost and wintered in any dry, frost-proof cellar, or under the greenhouse stage, if care be taken to prevent it from becoming too wet.

About the 1st of April the plant should be removed to a light, sunny situation and started into growth, when it can be planted out and treated as above advised.

The most essential point in the cultivation of this beautiful summer climber is, the proper training of the young shoots, and for this purpose the plants must be well looked after, and the shoots so trained as to occupy the desired space while they are yet young.

This Manettia is usually described as being a greenhouse climber, but I have found that when so grown it is so subject to the mealy bug and other insect pests that the patience of the cultivator becomes so exhausted by repeated and vain efforts to exterminate them that he finally abandons all attempts to cultivate the plant. When grown in the open air it proves to be perfectly free from all insect pests, and well rewards its cultivator with a profusion of bloom.

Propagation is effected by cuttings of the half-ripened wood, and after the plant has attained age by a careful division of the plant, or if cuttings of the roots four or five inches in length are placed in sand in gentle bottom heat they will soon produce nice plants, and if the young plants are well cared for nice flowering specimens will soon be obtained. The generic name was given in honor of Xavier Manetti, prefect of the Botanic Gardens at Florence, about the year 1756. The specific name alludes to the shape of the leaves.

This is a plant that can be grown in any situation where a herbaceous or summer climber is required, for during the dark days of winter there is no obstruction to the light, while for verandahs or trellisses no plant is equally as valuable. When well grown it will cover a space of from ten to fifteen feet in height by as much in breadth. Queens, N. Y., July 2d, 1883.

[We are glad that Mr. Parnell has called attention to this very beautiful plant, which in the anxiety to get novelties has been suffered to drop out of notice. When grown as Mr. Parnell suggests, it is one of the handsomest of summer open-air plants. Philadelphia gardeners in the olden times, used to grow it as a tub plant for lawn decoration, and often had specimens five feet high and six feet in circumference, a mass of scarlet from bottom to top in September. It is sometimes called Manettia glabra. - Ed. G. M].