Ixxiv. WAREHAM AND LYTCHETT HEATtt. 



out its first modest flower yellow and orange. It is, she remarked, related to 

 the nightshades and a greenhouse plant ; but yet it had teen out in the open there 

 for four years. The attention of the visitors was called to a specimen of New 

 Zealand flax which had been flowering ; the spiderwort from America, of which 

 in the States there are large numbers of various colours white, blue, and pink ; 

 the giant yellow centaur Centaurea Babylonica ; the giant scabious, which has 

 not flowered yet ; and the tree-fern, which, Mrs. Cecil said, was brought home 

 for her from Australia by her sister, Lady William Cecil, and had stood out of 

 doors two winters. They did not, she observed, lose anything seriously in those 

 gardens last winter. Several members of the party availed themselves of the 

 invitation to carry away bulbs of the curious air onion, which makes its bulbs in 

 the air ; and that they are not thereby lacking in pungency the party were 

 afforded ample olfactory evidence. Having looked with interest at the only 

 orange-tree that is hardy Citrus triptera, the visitors next found their gaze 

 arrested by the Mariposa lilies; and their guide told them that when she was 

 with her husband in the Grand Canon they rode through them as one would ride 

 through fields of buttercups. A showy red daisy of rich colour was, she said, a 

 flower that had come to England only since the Boer war. They made its 

 acquaintance in South Africa as the Barberton daisy, but it was now called the 

 Transvaal daisy. Six plants were brought home, but this was the only one 

 which had survived. Mrs. Cecil next showed one of the latest Chinese plants 

 introduced into England since China had been opened up. It was a new vine, 

 Vitis Henryana, from Northern China. The magnolias were admired, and then, 

 having noticed a good specimen of Clematis montana rubra, the party observed 

 the aromatic pineapple salvia, so called because, if you pinch a leaf between 

 your fingers, you can smell the distinctive and unmistakeable odour of the pine. 

 Mrs. Cecil next led the Club to the ornate, recently -planted yew gardens, which 

 she designed and Lord Eustace Cecil planted. It was, she explained, taken 

 from a real 16th Century design, and the four corners were planted with 

 nothing but lavender and roses. The onlookers could well believe that, when the 

 yews are grown, this will be a delightful part of the Lytchett Heath gardens. 

 They moved on to notice Yucca flaccida, a kind of woad, and Erica Lusitanica, 

 so called after Portugal, its native home. It is spreading freely, and flowers 

 from November to April with white flowers with little pinkish buds. This is the 

 only place in the British Isles where it has ever seeded itself; and when Sir 

 William Thiselton Dyer came down to see it he said frankly that he had not 

 believed that such a large area could be covered with it in this country. 

 The party passed on to a charming feature of the gardens, the series of 

 three ponds, in two of which gorgeous water-lilies are growing hybrids. 

 Mrs. Cecil stated how M. Marliac, the French floriculturist, hybridised the pink 

 Swedish varieties and some of the American varieties and produced these 

 brilliant coloured ones. A pretty little bit of white flower, called the water 

 hawthorn, was observed. In the upper ponds the party noticed the rich gleam 

 of the goldfish, which do not hurt the lilies. Mrs. Cecil stated that they 



