cHap.vI PHYLLOSTACHYS VIRIDI-GLAUCESCENS 127 
the rudest buffets of our climate, but also one of striking 
loveliness both in colour and form. Indeed there are some 
competent judges who would crown it Queen of Beauty. To 
this length I cannot go. For my taste, the growth is a little 
too straggling, and I prefer the statelier yet equally elegant 
curves of PHYLLOSTACHYS HeENonIS and P. Boryana. The 
Queen of Beauty should have a perfect figure. Yet would I 
not be held to undervalue the merits of P. VIRIDI-GLAUCESCENS. 
Paris no doubt recognised to the full the awe-striking 
majesty of Here, and the colder loveliness of Pallas Athene, 
though the meed of fairest fell to the divine witchery of 
Aphrodite. Ifa spell has been cast upon me by the magic 
beauty of P. Henonts I am not insensible to the fascination 
of the rival beauties. 
Ina mature clump of PHYLLOSTACHYS VIRIDI-GLAUCESCENS 
the stems which spring from the centre of the plant, being 
supported by one another, are tall, slender, and upright, 
though much zigzagged, bending gracefully outwards on all 
sides. Those which are on the outside seem to grow horizon- 
tally, for, lacking support, they are borne down by the weight 
of their own foliage, though that is hardly quite as luxuriant 
as it is In some species. This gives the plant the rather 
weak and straggling appearance of which I, perhaps in a 
hypercritical mood, have complained above. 
The colour of the culms is at first a bright green, which 
as they ripen fades into a rather dingy yellow. The lower 
rim of the salient, violet-tinted node is in the early state 
white, and underneath it for about half an inch down the 
stem is a thin layer of waxy bloom. With age the white 
rim disappears and the whole of the knot, but especially the 
