114 SELECTED NOTES FROM 



cultivation eleven hardy and three half-hardy species, all herba- 

 ceous perennials, with mostly yellow flowers. They are entirely 

 propagated by seed or division of root, and well able to take care 

 of themselves when once established in mixed border or on 

 rockwork. Raising this class of plant from seed is never desir- 

 able, unless delay is of no importance and great quantities 

 required. Any nurseryman who makes a speciality of supplying 

 perennials would probably send a rooted plant of O. tauricum 

 for about the ordinary price of a micro, slide, which would 

 at once furnish material for several slides, and be a permanent 

 plant for the garden as well, giving annual increase. I frequently 

 adopt this mode of acquisition, and call it " eating my cake and 

 having a bigger." 



Among the Fulmonarias of this order, F. Siberica is a most 

 desirable one to cultivate and examine. The tuberculated appear- 

 ance (from which, according to the superstition of " Herbs and 

 Signatures," q.v.^ the lungworts, obtained their generic name) is 

 most strongly marked. W. Teasdale. 



Hairs on Petal of Deutzia.— When hairs and scales are found 

 on the stem and leaves of a plant, it is not at all unusual for them 

 to extend over the calyx and petal of the flower also. Ordinary 

 examples of this may be seen in Rhododendron ferrugineiim and 

 most of the dwarf species and hybrids. These latter are now 

 very numerous, and their parentage uncertain, as florists give them 

 fancy names unknown to science. Incomparably the most beauti- 

 ful example I know is the flower of Correa ca?dinah's, when fresh 

 gathered. The calyx shows tawny rosettes on a lovely green 

 ground, the petal pearly stars on a crimson one. Even the foot- 

 stalk is indescribably beautiful. The plant blooms profusely 

 under glass most of the winter and spring months. 



There are five deutzias in cultivation. D. gracilis is best 

 known and seen everywhere in its flowering season, early spring. 

 In D. scabra the hairs are larger and more developed, and to this 

 it owes its roughness and consequently its scientific name ; from 

 the use made of it, probably the hairs are siliceous, a sort of 

 exterior raphides. Both of these are natives of Japan, from which 

 country and from China most of our finest hardy plants of the 

 last thirty or forty years have come. D. corymbusa and D. sta- 

 minea are Himalayan species, also white-flowered. D. sanguinea 

 is a red-flowered species, of which I have no further information. 



W. Teasdale. 



Ramenta of Ferns.— Mr. West's suggestion (see p. 47) that the 

 office of these on the Bracken (?) is the protection of its young 



