i88i.] NOTES. 253 



Of all the many points connected with the now important question 

 of hardy flowers, the first and most urgent is their nomenclature. 

 The more you know of hardy flowers, the more inextricably 

 confusing do their names become. Old Parkinson, when writing 

 of Narcissus 250 years ago, lamented this question of incorrect 

 names. "There hath" (said he) "been great confusion among 

 many of our modern writers of plantes in not distinguishing the 

 manifold varieties, . . . for every one almost, without consid- 

 eration of kinde or forme, or other speciall note, giveth names to 

 diversify one from another, that if one shall receive from severall 

 places the catalogues of their names (as I have many) as they set them 

 down, and compare the one catalogue with the other, he shall scarce 

 have three names in a dozen to agree togeather, — one calling that by 

 one name which another calleth by another, that very few can tell 

 what they meane," 



As John Parkinson was two centuries and a half ago, so are all 

 growers of hardy flowers to-day: one can never be sure of what 

 is intended by the names in most catalogues, and the result is dire 

 confusion, loss of money, labour, energy, and sometimes temper also. 

 The way out of the difficulty is not short, nor easy, nor inexpensive. 

 We must look to the more intelligent of cultivators, and induce them 

 to work out reliable monographs of their special favourites, just as 

 Mr Elwes did the Lilies, and as Mr Maw of Brosely is now doing the 

 Crocus. Here is honourable labour awaiting those cultivators who 

 have leisure and means. 



These same hardy flowers have had an exceptionally bad winter and 

 spring to contend with this season. Drought and frost and east winds 

 ruined the spring blossoms in all exposed places. Of all the sufferers 

 through climate, however, the mortality is greatest among half-hardy 

 shrubs, which are pretty generally cut down to the ground-level, and 

 not seldom killed outright. If we are to have winters of like severity, 

 Briar stocks for Ptoses are doomed to a certainty, and own-root Poses 

 will be in great demand. 



Cattleya citrina is not a showy Orchid, but a great favourite with 

 ladies on account of its delicious fruity, citron-like odour. It is like 

 Lilium auratum, in having been imported by the thousand — and like it, 

 also, in blooming well for a year or two, and then dying out altogether. 

 A gentleman wrote the other day to ask me how he should grow it 

 in order to keep it permanently, and that is a question many Orchid- 

 growers would like to have thoroughly answered. Its period of growth 

 is during our winter months, and I find that it grows quite freely in a 

 temperature only a few degrees above freezing-point. A plant grown 

 in a house from which frost was barely excluded last winter, made 

 growths twice the size of those made in a Cattleya-house (never below 



