294 



THE GARDENER'S MONTHLY 



[October, 



oftener planted than the others are. The Japan, 

 however, is useful in its way. There is not the 

 contrast between flower-buds and flowers and 

 leaves as in the Japan, because the leaves when 

 young are of a light green, and the flowers are 

 cream-colored, both in bud and when expanded ; 

 but it is such a bushy grower, that for covering 

 old stumps of trees and many other purposes it 

 is just the thing. The chief merit of the Hall's 

 Honeysuckle is its late blooming, coming in, as 

 it does, when the other two are about past their 

 prime. It also blooms occasionally through the 

 summer, but not sufficiently well to merit the 

 name of everblooming, which some bestow on it. 



EDITOR IAL NOTES. 



The Best Rose. — In France recently they 

 tried to find out what was the best Rose by vote. 

 La France had 79 votes, while Marie Van 

 Houtte had but 25. The old La Reine had 42, 

 and General Jacqueminot 52. These votes are 

 like our fruit votes. The one which is the most 

 extensively grown will get the most votes, be- 

 cause half the voters do not know of many other 

 kinds. But it is a superb kind. 



Xanthoceros sorbifolia.— This rare and beau- 

 tiful tree can be propagated by root cuttings. 



The Hemlock Spruce. — It seems almost a 

 matter of experiment whether trees do well or 

 not in any part of the world. The Evergreens 

 of the Pacific coast thrive in England, but do no 

 good in the Atlantic portion of the United Stat»es. 

 On the other hand, it is only exceptionally that 

 the Hemlock Spruce of the Eastern States does 

 well in Great Britain. A correspondent of the 

 Garden has found it do well in clay soils in 

 Austria. 



LiLroM Parryi. — This new Lily already noted 

 in our magazine, is thus referred to by Max Licht- 

 lin in the Garden, as appearing at Baden-Baden : 

 " Lilium Parryi is not, I consider, the showiest 

 of American Lilies, but it is one of the most ele- 

 gant. Here it has seven flowers on astern 5 feet 

 in height; their color is a deep citron-yellow, 

 with a few crimson spots ; they stand out hori- 

 zontally, and are tubiform and about 4 inches in 

 length ; the pollen is reddish brown. Mine is the 

 best variety. Some of them appear to be much 

 paler and not so large flowered. It is a very ele- 

 gant and graceful Lily." 



Public Spirit.— Geo Hubbard of Connecticut, 

 says : ''Nearly all our towns are full of objects of 



natural beauty, easy of development, and very 

 many of them rich in legendary and historical 

 associations. What is greatly wanted is some* 

 thing more of rural art and adornment; some- 

 thing which shall beautify our country villages, 

 educate public taste, make the homes of the 

 fathers dearer to their sons, and the local associa- 

 tions of childhood dearer to old age, and thus 

 turn back, in part, at least, the tide of migration 

 from the rural towns, and make the city seek the 

 country life, and make it what it used to be in 

 our own State and what it still is in the oldest 

 and most cultivated nations of the world." 



Lily Culture. — People in our country buy 

 Lilies and other rare native things, and stick 

 them in common garden ground, and when they 

 die " only wish they had the climate of England 

 to grow these nice things." But in England they 

 have to use some nice judgment in selecting first 

 what each particular class of things require. In 

 fact, it is horticultural skill and not mere climate 

 that makes success. Witness what a corres- 

 pondent of the Garden says about Lilies : " I 

 have been down to Ware's to see how the Cali- 

 fornian Lilies looked after the severe storms and 

 rains, and found them as happy as if they had 

 been in a glass case all the time — stately and 

 vigorous, showing great beauty of form as well 

 as splendor of blossom, sometimes held well 

 above a man's head. This superb Lily growth in 

 our own country settles at once the question of 

 the culture of these noble flowers, which come 

 to us from one of the fairest lands in the world — 

 certainly the happiest for flowers and trees I ever 

 saw. They are grown in light beds of free and 

 rich vegetable soil — decayed manure, Cocoa-nut 

 fibre, or leaf-mould, with a little mulching of 

 half-decayed stable manure over the earth. The 

 soil is the very opposite to that which we see in 

 a hard-baked border, and which may be de- 

 scribed as an unnatural soil. The earth in which 

 they do so well in every stage — 'scale' plants, 

 Lily babies, children, and up to the tallest — is 

 mixed after all on a natural plan, so to say, be- 

 cause in woody places, in copses, there are accu- 

 mulations of vegetable soil for ages. In it plants 

 find a different medium from what our hard and 

 fully- exposed garden soil so often is. The ques- 

 tion, then, of growing these Lilies is for ever set- 

 tled, and those who have not got beds of Rhodo- 

 dendrons or other American plants in which to 

 put them know exactly what to do. A late form 

 of the Californian Lily is very fine in flower now, 

 coming in after the usual type begins to fade." 



