№ 77-81. Indoor plants.

Saintpaulia was first put on market about 70 years ago and soon became a wide-spread kind of indoor plants. It is valued for profusive and long-drawn flowering. Due to its small size it can be kept on a narrow window-sill.

Hibiscus is a nice plant to be kept on the sunny window-sill. A Hibiscus bush can live for 20 years and even more, but its big flowers with paper-thin petals can blossom only for a couple of days, though with due care new flowers appear from spring to autumn.

Cyclamen is one of the most popular winter-flowering pot plants. Ancient Romans, who loved and gardened the cyclamens, believed that the flowers could protect from the evil eye, that is why they set them up for talismans.

Fuchsia Hybrid is a very old and a wide-spread kind of plants. It is famous for its bright and delicate originally-shaped flowers reminding dancing ballerinas. At the end of the 18th century Fuchsia came from Chile to England and then spread all over Europe.

Begonia was brought to Europe in the 18th century. It is still wide-spread and very popular due to its easy reproduction, variety of forms and exotic brightness of the leaves. Begonia was very famous in Russia, but after the French flight from Moscow in 1812 it was named "The Ear of Napoleon", because a leave of begonia looks like a frostbitten ear.