Dr. N. L. Britton took the chair. 



The following paper by W. Van Fleet, of Little Silver, N. J., was read by Secretary 

 Barron, and supplemented by lantern slides of hybrid gladioli exhibited and explained 

 by C. Van Brunt: 



HYBRIDIZING GLADIOLUS SPECIES 



By W. Van Fleet, New Jersey. 



In the following notes the term "species" is necessarily used in the horti- 

 cultural rather than the strict botanical sense. For many years, through the 

 kindness of Herr Max Leichtlin, Baden Baden, Germany, and others, we have 

 been enabled to receive newly collected Gladioli from Africa and Madagascar, 

 often in advance of their botanical determination, and at once used them for 

 breeding purposes. For convenience it may be well to divide these newcomers 

 into groups according to their garden affinities with well known species, and 

 as a further preliminary it may be stated that only Summer blooming species 

 and varieties having corms that keep well over Winter are desired by growers 

 in this country. We have produced hybrids between the Gandavensis or 

 psittacinus, as well as Lemoinei or purpureo-auratus sections, and such early 

 flowering species as tristris, vinulus, trimaculatus, cuspidatus, ramosus and 

 Byzantinus. Some of these crosses were very pretty, but rather difficult to 

 winter over without glass protection. Purpureo-auratus X vinulus and Gan- 

 davensis X trimaculatus bloom in August and have long-eekping conns. They 

 increase rapidly, have attractive characteristic forms and markings, but the 

 comparatively small size and neutral flesh tints of the blooms do not rank 

 them among decorative Gladioli. 



The largest group of new species comprises types allied to G. draco- 

 cephalus. They come under the names of Cooperi, platyphyllus and various 

 numbered forms collected during the last six years in Swaziland, Durban and 

 Madagascar. The most promising horticultural type came labeled from Mt. 

 Kilima-Noscharo, in Eastern German Africa. It is a slender but healthy 

 grower, and has a fine spike, large hooded flowers, scarlet penciled with 

 orange outside, and clear deep yellow inside, deepening into bright orange in 

 the throat. Seedlings of this distinct form are under way, but have not yet 

 bloomed. Platyphyllus has immense deeply ribbed foliage, looking like a 

 vigorous young palm, before the flower stem arises, and a large corm having 

 a hard woody covering. The flowers are rather small, red and yellow, pen- 

 ciled with purple, strongly hooded, with the perianth so short that the stigma 

 and anthers protrude, a characteristic shared by other allied unnamed species 

 recently flowered. Hybrids with large flowerec}. garden Gladioli have little 



