MARCH 267 



flowers and buds on it. Like Lilies -of -the -Valley, it 

 grows in the poorest and dryest lime soil. But it likes 

 good feeding. I think that description sounds as if it 

 were worth trouble to produce. Of course he meant, 

 when he took it up, that he grew it under glass. 



Two years ago I bought a plant of Holbcellia lati- 

 folia, and planted it in the ground in my cool green- 

 house, where it is doing quite beautifully, and is now 

 covered with buds. It is a delightful plant for a cool 

 greenhouse creeper, as the fragrance of its white flowers 

 is delicious, almost exactly like Orange flower ; and it is 

 so nearly hardy it will do out of doors against a wall in 

 many parts of England. I shall try it here when I have 

 struck some cuttings. It is often called, erroneously, 

 Stauntonia latifolia. 



I have just brought into the conservatory next the 

 drawing-room from the cool house in the kitchen garden 

 an interesting panful of one of the Moraaas. They seem 

 a large family ; all from the Cape of Good Hope. A 

 piece was given me by someone who called it M. fimbri- 

 ata. It has not been touched for two years, and was 

 well baked all the summer, is now healthy and growing, 

 and has four bloom -spikes ; last year it only threw up 

 one. The flower is like a small, delicate Iris, of a lovely 

 cold china -blue colour. The growth is quite different 

 from that of an Iris. The stalk has a graceful bend, 

 and a branching end with several buds, as is the case 

 with so many of the Cape bulbs. The buds open one 

 after the other as the flower dies. They will do when 

 picked and in water. My Crinum Moorei I have had for 

 three or four years in a large pot. It makes its leaves 

 in February, and throws up without fail its enormous 

 brown flower -stem. It is beginning to open now its 

 lily -like flowers ; these, like the buds of the Morcea 

 fimbriata, flower in succession, but, as each one lasts 



