THE 



GARDENER. 



DECEMBER 1881. 



NOTES. 



I PEAKING for a moment of Andre's new scarlet AntLurium, 

 alluded to in my "Notes" of the November number of 

 the ' Gardener,' I forgot to say that it was at Mr Bull's 

 nursery where I saw this plant so fine. Such an impres- 

 sion did its big spathes and great velvety green leaves 

 make upon me, that I specially took my wife to see them, — she, while 

 not unmindful of other duties, being — as all gardeners' wives should 

 ever be — deeply interested in plants and flowers. I think, if I were 

 M. Andre, I should make a special pilgrimage from Paris to Chelsea 

 to see my foundling ; for of all men there are few who have more 

 interest and affection for a plant than has the man who collected 

 it, or introduced it for the first time into Europe. What a blaze 

 that plant will make amongst the white-flowered Orchids when more 

 plentiful, — when the little guinea and two guijiea plants now so 

 numerous become strongly established ! And yet another word on the 

 potentialities of the thing. "A little bird whispered to me'' of the 

 " lots of seed " hanging on the spadices of this Anthurium in another 

 place, adding maliciously, "I'll not say with what they were fertilised." 

 Naughty, tantalising little bird ! May your softest perch be a furze 

 bush, and I hope the servant may give you buckwheat-chaft' instead 

 of hemp-seed for your supper ! Even then may " no song no supper" 

 be your lot until the crack of doom, bad birdie ! 



Of all the notes in the last number of the ' Gardener,' none could 

 possibly be more interesting, or more to the point, than that on page 

 524, referring to Calanthe Veitchii, and its pale and dark varieties. 



2 m 



