1885.1 



AND HORTICULTURIST. 



55 



others with three leaves arranged alternately ; and I 

 this character, taken together with peculiar stalked 

 and bent anthers, will almost always tell the young 

 botanist that he has a Melastomaceous plant. 



This very pretty new species was introduced by 

 Messrs. Veitch & Son, who furnish us with the 

 following account thereof: 



"A beautiful stove flowering shrub introduced 

 by us from Sumatra through Mr. Curtis. It is a 

 bushy plant of rather slender habit with erect 

 shoots and subpendulous branchlets, furnished ] 

 with ovate-oblong bright green leaves with reddish | 

 midribs. The flowers are produced in great num- ' 

 bers in terminal and lateral panicled cymes on 

 flower stalks of a beautiful coral red. Each flower 

 is about half an inch in diameter and has an ivory 

 white, almost undivided calyx and a creamy white ' 

 corolla of five roundish oblong petals which show ' 

 to great advantage the central tuft of purple sta- 

 mens. The neat and compact habit of the plant, 

 the profusion with which its chaste flowers are 

 produced, and which continue in perfection for 

 many weeks in the autumn, render this Medinilla 

 one of the most valuable stove shrubs of recent 

 introduction." 



SCRAPS AND QUERIES. 



Sudden Developments in Species. — A dis- 

 tinguished Canadian botanist pleasantly writes ; 

 "The Gardeners' Monthly for January has 

 come to hand, and I have looked through it with 

 interest. You must do an immense amount of 

 periodical reading, and correspondence, to get 

 so much news into it. Your article on rapid 

 changes in species reminds me of a procumbent, 

 rooting, CEnothera, which I received from Edin- 

 burg in 1871. It has been propagated from the 

 root only (not by seed — Ed. G. M.), and is now 

 undistinguishable from QL. fruttcosa, which is 

 native with us, and which I planted in the same 

 border. I am sorry to see the announcement of 

 the death of my old friend Mr. George Sterling, in 

 whose collection, when I was a student in Edin- 

 burg, I often found rare Swiss and other Alpines 

 that could not be obtained elsewhere. So many 

 of my old friends, as Dr. Neill, Dr. Greville, Dr. 

 Balfour, Mr. McNab, of that time, have passed 

 away. We who are left are now entering on a 

 new year ; let us work hopefully, ready to com- 

 plete our time-circle, and prepared, as well as may 

 be, for the higher state." 



Curious Fact About the Variegation of 

 Foliage. — Mr. Frank L. Bassett, Hammonton, 



N. J., notes: "Some time ago I put in some cut- 

 tings of Tradescantia zebrina that had half of 

 each leaf green and the other half yellow. In 

 part of them the green was the uppermost color. 

 In the others the yellow was the upper color. 

 When they grew I was somewhat astonished to 

 find that the lateral shoots were not variegated at 

 all, but found that in every case the lateral shoot 

 was colored the same as the lower half of the leaf 

 it grew from. Can you tell me the why of this?" 



Change in the Color of Flower of Victoria 

 regia. — A correspondent says: "The changes 

 which the Victoria regia flowers undergo, as in- 

 dicated by Dr. Richardson's gardener (p. 6) were 

 very well shown in magnificent colored plates 

 published in Moore's Gardeners' Magazine, about 

 1851." 



[Also the changes were noted in the letter of 

 Mr. Robert Schumburgk, in the letter which at- 

 tracted so much attention in the Gardeners' 

 Chronicle in 1850; in Mr. Thomas Meehan's ac- 

 count in Xioviri\n^'s Horticulturist for 1852; and 

 in the noble work with colored drawings published 

 by John Fiske Allen, of Salem, Mass., in 1853. — 

 Ed. G. M.] 



Injurious Insects. — "A Subscriber" says: 

 "After reading Mr. A. W. Smith's remarks on 

 diseases ot plants, I thought 1 would ask : Would 

 not an inquirj' into the losses and injuries incurred 

 by destructive insects be also an interesting sub- 

 ject of value to the readers of the Monthly." 



[We need scarcely say that any such contribu- 

 tions will be equally valuable with any on the 

 other topic. In fact, losses to cultivators from 

 disease and from insects are often very closely 

 related to each other. — Ed. G. M.] 



The Rel.-vtion of Color to Flavor in Fruits 

 and Vegetables. — Mr. Emmett S. Goff, con- 

 tributes a scientific paper to the American Natural- 

 ist, to show that there is a relation between color 

 and flavor in fruits and vegetables. Mildness and 

 sweetness accompany light colored flesh to a 

 greater extent than dark colored, he contends. 

 All who know how blanching celery removes bit- 

 terness must assent to this proposition, and the list 

 of examples he gives proves that the rule is the 

 same all through. 



The TuBERoas Vines of Cochin China. — As 

 we suspected some time since, these tuberous 

 grapes are closely allied to our own tuberous Vitis 

 incisa, of Texas and the Indian Territory. They 

 are not truly grape vines, but form a section be- 

 tween Ampelopsis and the true grapes. 



