32 THE FLOWER GARDEN. 



meris, once a Celsia, is now, its third designation, 

 an Alonsoa ; and our list is by no means exhausted.* 



Going on at this rate, a man might spend the 

 morn of his life in arriving at the present state of 

 botanical science, and the rest of his days in running 

 after its novelties and changes. We are only too 

 glad when public sanction triumphs over individual 

 whim, and, as in the cases of Georgina proposed for 

 Dahlia, and Chryseis for Eschscholtzia, resists the 

 attempted change. 



One class of plants, which, though it has lately 

 become most fashionable and cultivated by an almost 

 separate clique of nurserymen and amateurs, cannot 

 yet be said to rank with florists' flowers, is that of 

 the Orchidaceae, trivially known, when first intro- 

 duced, by the . name of air-plants. It is scarcely 

 more than ten years ago that any particular attention 

 was bestowed upon this interesting tribe, and there 

 are now more genera cultivated than there were 

 then species known. Among all the curiosities of 

 botany there is nothing more singular we had almost 

 said mysterious than the character, or, to speak 

 more technically, the " habit " of this extraordinary 

 tribe. The sensation which the first exhibition of 



* There is a curious perversion of name in the tuberose, which has 

 nothing to do with " tubes " or " roses," but is the conniption of its 

 specific name, Polianthes tuberosa, simply signifying " tuberous :" so 

 Jerusalem artichoke has nothing to do with the hill of Sion, but is 

 vulgarized from the Italian Girasole, sunflower, of which it is a 

 species ; so Mayduke cherry, from Medoc ; and " grass," from aspa- 

 ragus. Gilliflower is probably July-flower ; but it would take an 

 essay to discuss which is the true gilliflower of our great-great- 

 grandmothers. 



