viii HORTUS MORTOLENSIS 
Dr. J. Séhrens, Director of the Botanic Gardens in Santiago; 
for plants from South Brazil to Mr. Reukart of Villefranche, 
and to Prof. von Wettstein of Vienna; for Uruguay plants 
to Prof. Arechavaleta of Montevideo; for Argentine plants 
to the late Dr. Weber of Paris. 
For Australian plants we are indebted to the late Baron 
von Miiller, to the late Mr. van den Bossche, to Messrs. 
Veitch & Sons of London, and to the Directors of the 
Botanic Gardens of Melbourne, Port Darwin and Sydney, 
and others. For New Zealand plants to Captain Dorrien- 
Smith of Tresco Abbey, Scilly, and to Dr. A. R. Wallace. 
Besides these, we owe numerous plants to the kindness 
of many whose names it is impossible to enumerate here, 
but of which some are given in the notes at the end of the 
catalogue. 
The garden is practically never without flowers. The 
end of September may be considered as the dullest time, 
but as soon as the autumnal rains set in, the flowering 
begins and continues on an ever-increasing scale until the 
middle of April or beginning of May. Then almost every 
plant is in flower; the most marked features being the 
graceful branches of the single yellow Banksian rose, 
Fortune’s yellow rose, the sweet-scented Pittosporum, the 
wonderful crimson Cantua buaxifolia, and the blue spikes of 
the Canarian Echiwm. 
Early in January the spring flowers begin to bloom— 
Anemones, Antholyza, Narcissus, Iris, Sparaxis, Freesias, 
_ &c., but before the end of May these have all withered, and 
the bare soil is a strange sight to those who are accustomed 
to the green lawns of northern gardens. 
In May many succulents begin to flower, the Opuntias 
and Mesembrianthemums especially showing a great variety 
of colour. Giant Agaves throw up their tall flower stalks, 
and are in full bloom a few weeks later. Erythrinas, 
Brachychitons, Metrosideros, and many other interesting 
exotic trees and shrubs, and some of the Bignoniacez, open 
their gorgeous blossoms only during the warmest part of the 
summer. The Gardeners’ Chronicle has repeatedly published 
lists of plants in flower in the garden in midwinter and in 
midsummer. 
The soil at La Mortola is formed by the decomposition 
of nummulitic limestone of the Lower Eocene period.* It 
* F, Giordano & N. Pellati, Carta Geologica delle Alpi Occidentali, 
R. Ufficio Geologico, Roma, 1908. 
