229 



inspection. The publication by Mr. A. 15. Frennan-Mitford (now 

 Lord Kedesdale) of his most useful and able work "The Main boo 

 Garden"* has also been the means of greatly popularising tin 

 plants in gardens, and diffusing a general knowledge of their 

 characteristics and requirements. 



But during the past few years the enthusiasm of cultivators of 

 bamboos has had a serious setback. They have been concerned 

 to see the flowering of their bamboos one after another, followed, 

 as that phenomenon nearly always is, by the death or serious 

 crippling and disfigurement of the plants. Only those who have 

 witnessed it can appreciate the grievous transformation that takes 

 place when a bamboo, hitherto embodying the very perfection of 

 leafy grace and vegetative vigour, breaks into flower and, in a few 

 months, becomes a bundle of dead, leafless sticks. 



The reports of botanists and travellers, especially in the Eastern 

 tropics, had acquainted us with the phenomena attending the 

 flowering of bamboos in their natural state : the transformation of 

 great areas of luxuriant bamboo forest into barren, and oft- n (by 

 the firing of the dead stems and leaves) blackened deserts. 

 Under cultivation in Europe, too, bamboos had been known to 

 Bower at rare intervals. The well-known Arundinaria femmica 

 (Bambusa Metake), for instance, flowered in 1872 and 1874, and 

 Arundinaria Falconer i flowered in 1876; in the latter case the 

 flowering was followed by the death of all the plants. But the 

 likelihood that the new hardy bamboos introduced so freely into 

 cultivation 15 to 20 years ago would flower in their due time did 

 not enter many people's minds. The event was too uncertain and 

 too few people had seen the results for them to be disturbed by 

 any thought of the fate that would overtake their bamboos when 

 the time for flowering had come. 



ist few years have considerably increased 

 our knowledge of the behaviour of bamboos flowering under 



desirable that some record should be 

 made embodying our knowledge so far as it goes. The species 

 enumerated in the following notes are all, so far as we know, that 

 have flowered under cultivation within the last thirty years. The 

 list will enable future cultivators to form some estimate of the 

 probable duration of the lives of their plants and to judge of their 

 value too. For it seems that we shall have to regard bamboos in 

 much the ame light as leasehold property. Other things being 

 equal, a p ant recently raised from seed, with pretty nearly its 

 full term of years to run, will obviously be of more value than 

 another with the greater portion of its M lease " expired. 



Arundinaria auricoma, Mitford. — Flowers were noticed on 

 plants growing in the Bamboo Garden at Kew as long ago as 1898, 

 and they have been seen every year since. It is only very few of 

 the culms, however, that flower, and except that the flowering 

 culms die, the plants are not affected. 



A.falcata, Nees.— Flowered in the Temperate House at Kew in 

 1881 and about the same time in several other places. It had 

 flowered previously in Europe during the years ls6fc-7« 



cultivation, and it seems 



London : Macmillan & Co.. 1896. 



