Aucuba japonica offers a shining example of vegetable good nature, because if ever a shrub was called upon to perform miracles the Spotted Laurel could certainly be so described. In the black grime of city cemeteries, their leaves thick with soot, they are condemned to a sunless well nigh airless existence, a picture of woe and neglect.

Again the long arching canes will reach 7 to 9 ft. and as they are not prone to suckering this bamboo will make a fine specimen plant for a lawn. A. nitida has purple-coloured canes and a rather neater foliage than murielae but is in other respects identical. Of all the bamboos this is the species I like the best.

Arundinaria nitida is readily as the arundirwias, a fact which causes regret as they are ver handsome, and do not spread all over the garden. Phyllostachys aurea, whose shoots are said to be edible, has pale cream canes but rather nondescript foliage. P. nigra grew wonderfully well in the gardens where I worked in Norfolk and Cornwall, possibly because it enjoys sunshine and a fairly dry root run.