ORNITHOGALUM. 



thing, the true Cephalanthera rubra, the "rarissinie " pride of certain 

 Gloucestershire woods, and often to be seen in warm places of the 

 Southern Alps, as in the fringes of the chestnut woods of San Dalniazzo 

 de Tenda, with tall light stems, carrying each three or four large 

 flowers of glowing ruby-amethyst, very brilliant and, from a distance, 

 suggesting Gladiolus paluster, but, on nearer approach, a smaller 

 reproduction of Bletia hyacinthina, that beautiful and quite hardy 

 Japanese Orchid, with pink and albino forms, which may be trusted 

 no less happily in the same rich-soiled, sheltered, well-drained 

 garden-conditions as Cephalanthera, though it will be long before 

 it there attains the full development of beauty that may be seen 

 crowning the river-bluffs below the Fuji-kawa Rapids hi jungles 

 of gleaming swordlike- foliage and delicate nights of crimson 

 sparks. The race will be found treated by M. Correvon and Graf 

 Silva Tarouca at ampler length than is fairly possible here — Orchi- 

 daceae, in its hardy branches at least, not being a saxatile or 

 essential rock-garden race. 



Origanum. — The Marjorams offer us a race of small upshooting 

 herbaceous plants of savoury odour from the Levant, with woolly 

 ample foliage as a rule, and little feeble flowers usually redeemed by 

 the magnificent ruby colouring of the bracts that enclose them. All 

 may be raised from seed, cuttings, or division, and all should have 

 a hot dry place on some sunny ledge of the rock-garden, not 

 too close in the foreground, and high enough up to show the grace of 

 the habit and nodding heads. 0. Dictamnus is in all the shady 

 rocks of Crete, and is one of the best, with big oval leaves (that are 

 evergreen) flocculent in white wool, and hop-like hanging heads in 

 branching showers ; 0. pukhellum of the Paris Garden has smaller 

 leaves,, not so round, and many-bunched panicles of nodding blossom ; 

 0. Toumeforti is like an almost hairless 0. Dictamnus, with longer 

 flower-tubes, and the stems leafy all the way up ; 0. pulchrum is 

 especially pretty, quite hairless, with leafy little stems of some 6 or 

 9 inches, and any number of nodding flower-clusters, enclosed and 

 hidden in bracts of bright purple ; and there are many other species, 

 all of merit in the same line and for the same treatment, among their 

 points of importance being the fact that they bloom in later summer 

 and far on into autumn ; here are some more names : 0. libanoticum, 

 0. sipyleum, 0. rotundifolium, 0. Haussknechtii, &c. 



Oraithogalum. — The stars of Bethlehem are adequately coped 

 with in such catalogues as offer them, nor is the race ardently desired 

 in the rock-garden, many of the species, such as 0. nutans and 0. 

 umbellatum (both hard to beat among the best), making haste to turn 



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