126 THE FLORAL WORLD AND GARDEN GUIDE. 



the 2nd, the Royal Botanic Society will hold an exhibition at the gardens in 

 Regent's Park, and rhododendrons will constitute a distinct feature. Another 

 fete, at the same place, is fixed for the 23rd. Among the various announce- 

 ments of exhibitions, we may here name the exhibition of the Royal Oxford- 

 shire, June 15th ; AVarwick, June 30th ; Handsworth, Birmingham, 29th; and 

 Hereford, 29th. Dates of other local shows will be found in our usual list. 



THE AUSTRALIAN GIGANTIC LILY— DORYANTHES EXCELSA. 



BY DR. JOHN LOTSKY. 



Although it has been my lot to behold, in their native soil and surrounded by their 

 native sky, the finest specimens of the floral world — the cocoa groves, near Bahia, the ar- 

 borescent Rexias and Melastomas of the same place, the mile-wide meadows of Epacris, 

 Dalvinia, and Gomphalobium, in Australia — yet, taking it all in all, I think that the Aus- 

 tralian Gigantic Lily is one of the finest lilants in the world. In the first years of the esta- 

 blishment of the colony of New South Wales, it grew near Sydney, but its extreme beatify 

 must soon have made it an object of destruction for the idle and ignorant, and we may 

 now travel a hundred miles inland before seeing it ; the more so, as it is not a gregarious, 

 but quite a solitarily growing plant. Its very name implies that it belongs to the sixth 

 class of Linnaeus (JTexandria Monogynici), and the natural order of Liliacere of Jussieu. The 

 best description and delineation of it has been given by Ferdinand Bauer, the companion of 

 Robert Brown, in his " Illustrationes Floras Nova; Hollandire," of which very rare work, 

 the copy formerly existing in the British Museum, is missiug. The Australian Gigantic 

 Lily has flowered once or twice in this country, and has been described in some of the bo- 

 tanical journals. I shall, therefore, give rather a description of its form and splendour as 

 it grows in its native soil. Imagine a straight stem of a Liliaceous plant, twelve to 

 fourteen feet high, on which a number of bracteae are disseminated. The base of this stem 

 is surrounded by a number of fine lustrous lanceolate leaves, about two feet long. On 

 the top of this stem appears the bunch of flowers, which, at a distance, seems as a piece of 

 scarlet fluttering in the breeze. There were about twenty single flowers combined in this 

 inflorescence, each of the size of the common white lily, but, to repeat, they are here of the 

 most brilliant scarlet. In all my travels in Australia, I met only with one solitary flower- 

 ing specimen, in the Five Islands south of Sydney. It stood on an elevation of fine alluvial 

 soil, overshadowed by a few palms, and other semi-tropical plants. It would be impossi- 

 ble to dry the whole bunch of flowers for the herbarium, so I cut it into several, perhaps, 

 twenty specimens, which became exsicated rather slow, but made fine specimens, the colours 

 being thoroughly preserved. The Gigantic Lily has no smell, as if nature did not want to 

 expend all merits on one single plant. I did not dig up this plant, as the tuber would have 

 been overgrown, being that of a flowering plant, but my friend, Richard Cunningham, gave 

 me several bulbs from the public gardens of Sydney; they were of the size of the largest 

 Brazilian Amaryllis, but more elongated. As the great phytophile, Baron Ltidwig, in Cape 

 Town, wished to have some bulbs for trying them at the Cape, I forwarded some to him, 

 but I have not heard whether they succeeded in that climate. The Australian Gigantic 

 Lily is one of the plants which, if it could be grown in the Crystal Palace, would attract 

 tens of thousands of visitors. Even a wax model of the inflorescence, in its natural size, 

 would be highly interesting, and I made preparations to have one made; but as this could 

 only be done from the splendid engravings of Ferdinand Bauer's work, missing in the 

 British Museum library, I must yet bide my time. 



■^ooooocococ-z-c-oc-c-o-c-c-c 



Green Fly on Peaches and Nectarines. — A few days ago I found some of my 

 peach trees in pots covered with the brown peach aphis. I at once determined to test the 

 efficacy of Sigma's Aphis Powder ; so I took my powder from the cupboard near the 

 kitchen fire, where it has rested for some weeks, filled a large pepper castor with it, put 

 on its perforated cover as usual, and over the cover a piece of muslin. I then gently 

 inclined the shoots of my trees so that the under surfaces of the leaves could be got at, 

 and dredged on the powder so as to cover the leaves and shoots with a thin coat. This 

 was done about ten a.m. ; the powder was suffered to rest on the shoots till the next 

 morning, when the usual syringing took place, and it was cleanly washed off. Not a 

 single aphis remained alive, and the trees operated upon have not been infected since the 

 application. I have never yet found any aphis remedy so efficacious or so easily applied, 

 I have no aphides on my Poses this season, but I feel tolerably confident that it will 

 destroy them with equal facility. My powder is kept in a very dry, warm cupboard, 

 near the fire ; a few hours' exposure to damp air will nearly destroy its efficacy. — THOS. 

 KlVERS (in Gardener's Chronicle). 



