76 THE FLORIST AND POMOLOGIST. [April, 



blotches, and the flowers olive-green, with a striated pale-edged dorsal sepal, 

 brownish petals, stained with purple, and a dark purple lip. 



Turning from shows to books, we find a few striking subjects to record. The 

 true Vanda insignis (Bot. Mag. t. 5759) has been at last obtained from the 

 Moluccas by Messrs. Veitch and Sons, and is a beautiful species, with unequally 

 abscised leaves, and rich brown chequered flowers, having a saucer-shaped pale 

 rosy-tinted lip. Brassia Lawrenceana longissima (Bot. Mag. t. 5748), a Costa Rica 

 plant flowered by W. W. Buller, Esq., of Strete Ealeigh, is a magnificent 

 epiphyte, with the deep orange-coloured sepals seven inches long, and marked 

 with broad purple blotches, the petals and lip about one-third of the length, and 

 the latter pale yellow, spotted near the base. In Ccelogyne Eeichenbachiana 

 (Bot. Mag. t. 5753) we have a beautiful new species of the Pleione group, 

 remarkable for its large, depressed, and reticulately-coloured pseudobulbs, and 

 its handsome pale rosy-tinted flowers, having the lip richly spotted with purple, 

 crimson, and ciliately toothed ; it was sent by Colonel Benson from the extreme 

 eastern part of India, and has been flowered both by Messrs. Veitch and at Kew. 



We find illustrations of two fine conservatory climbers, Tacsonia eriantha 

 (Bot. Mag. t. 5750), and Cobcea penduliflora (Bot. Mag. t. 5757). The first of 

 these resembles T. mollissima, but has the under surface of the leaves woolly 

 with white hairs ; the flowers are rose-pink. The Cobsea is a very singular and 

 graceful climber, with pale green leaves of about two pairs of oblong leaflets, the 

 mid-rib running out into a long pointed tortuous tendril ; from the axils of these 

 leaves issue the long-stalked flowers, which are yellowish-green, bell-shaped, but 

 cut at the edge into narrow, pendulous, wavy, strap-shaped lobes 3-4 in. long. 

 It comes from the mountains of Caraccas, and has been flowered at the cool end 

 of the palm stove at Kew. 



Among hardy subjects, a lovely little rock plant from the European Alps, 

 where it grows in strongly calcareous soil, is the Iberidella rotundifolia (Bot. 

 Mag. t. 5749), a dwarf tufted herb, with obovate entire leaves, and rosy- lilac 

 flowers with a yellow eye, and half an inch in diameter, collected into crowded 

 erect cylindrical racemes. M. Van Houtte, in the last number of his Flore, 

 figures the ornamental Cerasus Caproniana ranunculifiora (Flore t. 1805), a 

 variety which supersedes all other double-flowered cherries in the extreme full- 

 ness of its large pure white flowers, and in the regularity with which the petals 

 are disposed. It is grown in some French gardens under the name of C. Rhexii, 

 and in Holland under that of C. flore-pleno nova. From the same source we 

 learn of an Ilex Aquifolium ciliata aureo-marginata (Flore t. 1811), which is 

 one of the most beautiful of dwarf shrubs, the pigmy of the genus. It is said 

 to be of Belgian origin, and to be as hardy as its type ; but the elegant, narrow, 

 spine-toothed leaves are beautifully variegated with a broad golden margin, and 

 hence the plant forms one of the prettiest of all dwarf variegated evergreens. 

 M. Van Houtte quaintly observes that it would make one of the prettiest hedges 



