Notes and Gleanings. 317 



The Night-bloomixg Cereus. — Of this, Ccrcus grandiJIo7'us, there is one 

 large old plant here, which I have heard several gardeners and gentlemen say is 

 the largest of its kind in England. It flowers here every year, and in 1869 there 

 were one hundred and thirty-one flowers opened from May 29 to June 28, 

 and as many as sixty-seven open in one night. This year it has just finished 

 blooming, the greatest number open at one time being thirty-one, when we had 

 the plant photographed by the magnesium light. The size of the plant is as fol- 

 lows : five and a half feet high, nine feet across, and a foot and a half tln-ough. 

 It is trained on a strong iron trellis, and every year s fresh growth is laid on the 

 top, and closely tiec' in on the sides. 



R. Alailland, Pendyffryn Gardens, Conway. 



[This is the finest specimen bloomed in this country of which we have any 

 information. We have more than once been taken to see, by lantern light, one 

 or two blooms on small specimens. The finest we ever saw was trained over 

 the treUised arcade, admitting from the Ganges to the house of the curator of 

 the Botanic Gardens at Calcutta. Its hundreds of blooms, and the fire-flies dart- 

 ing among them, are vividly remembered.] English Journal of Horticulture. 



Dendrobium chrysotis. — This beautiful platit was flowered for the first 

 time in England, by Messrs. Brooke & Co., of Manchester, in September last. 

 It is a beautiful stove epiphyte, somewhat resembling D. Jimbriaticin oculatum 

 (the so-called D. Paxtoni oi gardens), but differing in the much more deeply-cut 

 fringe of the lip, in having on the disk of the lip two dark blotches instead of 

 one, and more particularly in bearing its flowers on the yet leafy stems, the flow- 

 ers of D.fimbriattun appearing on stems which have become ripened and leaf- 

 less. It was imported from Assam. 



The stems are slender, rod-like, three to four feet long, bearing thin, oblong- 

 ovate sessile leaves, while the large showy flowers form drooping spikes, six to 

 nine inches long, and are of a bright orange-yellow color, with two dark spots 

 on the disk of the lip. The sepals and petals are ligulate, narrower than in D. 

 fi7)ibriattim, while the lip is more rhomboid, edged with a beautiful deep moss- 

 like fringe. When exhibited in September last at South Kensington, it obtained 

 a first-class certificate. Its cultivation is similar to that of other Dendrobes, and 

 it requires plenty of heat. Florist and Poniologist. 



The Virtue of the Sunflower. — Mr. Martin, in a paper presented by 

 him to the Socidti Therapeutique de France, affirms that the common sunflower, 

 extensively cultivated, has the effect of neutralizing the unwholesome vapors 

 which are so fatal to health and life in marsliy districts. The Dutch, who live 

 only by diking and draining their low lands, and are therefore good authority, 

 pronounce sunflower culture a specific for intermittent fever, the scourge of Hol- 

 lajid. They assert that it has disappeared from every district where the experi- 

 ment has been tried. It is not yet known whether this is the result of its rapid 

 growth producing oxygen, or whether it emits ozone and destroys those germs, 

 animal and vegetable, which produce that miasma which brings fever in its 

 train. Medical Record. 



