IRISH GARDENING. 



57 



and, ill any case, could on))' be effected along very 

 g-eneral lines. But there cannot be any greater 

 difficulty in reserving for the public use belts and clumps 

 which are growing on untenanted land than in reserving 

 gravel pits, quarries, water supplies, or rights of way. 

 A certain amount of difficulty may arise in procuring 

 the timber, but theft and clandestine cutting would 

 be chiefly confined to small trees, and the local police 

 could take charge of such timber without greatly over- 

 taxing their strength. 



The general result of such a polic\' would be that 

 many otherwise treeless districts would possess a 

 certain proportion of timber capable of relieving that 

 terribly monotonous aspect which so many purely agri- 

 cultural counties are beginning to assume. Well de- 

 veloped trees lend a dignity and character to a coimtry 

 which cannot be acquired bj' it in any other way, 

 and in districts in which the land cannot be economically 

 given up for woods and plantations, belts and hedgerow 

 trees practically have to supply all that can be provided 

 b\- ordinary means. One has only to travel in some of 

 the most picturesque counties in the south of England 

 and Ireland to satisfy oneself that fine timber can 

 make, or the absence of it mar, a landscape, and should 

 the present policy continue in force much longer 

 timber trees outside preserved woods and demesnes 

 will soon be a thing of the past. 



Early Irises. 



Iris reticulata appeals to most plant lovers, probably 

 because not only is it one of the earliest to flower, but 

 it is also one that we can pick and take into our rooms 

 and look at when the weather does not allow us to pay 

 it frequent visits where it is growing. The purple and 

 golden yellow of this flower is a wonderful depth of 

 colour. It is a native- of Asia Minor, but it is not parti- 

 cular as to soil or situation. If planted in a sunny 

 border it naturally flowers earlier than if in a shadv 

 place, but in either position it seldom disappoints, and 

 any ordinary garden soil will suit it. The leaves are 

 square, narrow, and sharply pointed, and they only 

 attain their full size w'hen the flowers are over. Good 

 bulbs can be had at a very moderate rate from most 

 bulb grctwers. 



Iris rosenbachiana. — This is another very beautiful 

 bulbous iris, not a very common one, but which varies 

 ver}' much when raised from seed. The two flowers at 

 present open in the Botanic Gardens, Glasnevin, are a 

 lovely reddish brown, marked with bright orange. Sir 

 Michael Foster describes a nearly pure yellow variety 

 of this iris with a few purple markings. The plant is a 

 native of Turkestan, and seems perfectly hardy in culti- 

 vation. The flowers stand about 6 inches high, and the 

 foliage is very short at time of flowering. /. rosen- 

 bachiana is figured in Bot. Mag. T. -^ly^. 



R. .M. Pollock. 



It is proposed to hold a flower show in Kingstown 

 during the summer. Promises of support have already 

 been received from prominent residents in the township, 

 and an influential committee is being formed. The 

 show will probably be held in -August. 



Current Topics. 



By E. K.VOWLniN, F.R.H..S., Secretary, Royal Horti- 

 cultural Society of Ireland. 



WHAT'S in a name?" asked \V. S. ; or was it 

 my Lord Bacon who begot that Limerick ? 

 .Anyway, not a few of the older school are 

 wondering what our garden nomenclature is coming to, 

 or wherein lays the sense of changing that which seems 

 well suited both in common sense and sense of long 

 usage. Personally, it is a little humiliating when we 

 send notes across channel to let them know we Irish 

 gardening folk are still gay-an-bawl (hope that'll pass) 

 and mention crotons, for instance, to find such ominously 

 followed by codia^um in brackets, and a dozen other 

 good old sensible names treated with the same juvenile 

 levity. One, of course, does come across the head 

 gardener able to cope with this latest craze in nomen- 

 clature, and tlien we are like those who "gazed, and 

 still the wonder grew, one little head could carry all he 

 knew." He it is who is so generously verbose as to 

 invariably give the two ; but, poor man, he is too often 

 looking for a job. 



Here is another phase of this new worry of gardening 

 life. W'e were admiring a fine specimen bamboo to be 

 told it was not a bamboo, but a phyllostachys. Blushing 

 for our ignorance we hastened to another lovely phyllo- 

 stachys, to be smartly informed that it was an arundi- 

 naria by the young head in all the pride and power of 

 his first place, and from henceforth we blush no more, 

 but wickedly glory in the perversity of our nature, which 

 brings the whole jing-bang under the head of bamboo — 

 bamboos, and Bamboos with a big B. 



\'ain it is to ^c> into latterday orchid nomenclature. 

 Our high priests of hybridism have somehow managed 

 to catch Dame Nature a-napping, and played the very 

 deuce with her floral aristocrats, breaking down her 

 boundaries. Such cattleya drivings, with other mild di- 

 versions, to the end that her high-bred families are in all 

 the hopeless confusion of a bastard breed I True, there 

 is an endeavour to preserve the dual pedigree by grafting 

 the head of the father on to the mother's tail. But these 

 in their turn are being further seduced from such virtuous 

 paths as are left to them, and we shall not be surprised 

 to eventually find the individual specimens of an orchid 

 exhibit simply labelled "seedlings," and dumped down 

 under a dozen numbers by inch measurements of their 

 lips, labellums, or other parts of their anatomy. 



Numerical nomenclature, or rather classification, is 

 in a way a new idea. We were advised to get a copy 

 of the new Daffodil Classification list which bears the 

 imprimateur of the Royal Horticultural Society, and 

 got it. On a brief investigation we felt — well, " We do 

 not like thee, Dr. Fell, but why it is we cannot tell ; we 

 do not like thee. Dr. Fell." In short, here is a something 

 which seems derogatory to the dignified labours of Barr, 

 Burbidge, and other daffodil devotees, and the more one 

 lingers over it the less one likes it. That feeling, how- 

 ever, has since been endorsed by the opinions of high 

 authorities, and it need not detain here. In the al- 

 together, perhaps, and in the interests of gardening 

 generally concerning this matter — and it does concern 

 it in a very great deal - it would be well if a permanent 



