WINTER FLOWERS 27 



along the under side of the sprays in January, 

 strongly scented like hawthorn. More commonly 

 grown is the Japanese Chimonanthus fragrans, also 

 known as Calycanthus prcecox, diffusing its powerful 

 perfume at the dead season of the year. One 

 should be careful to get the variety called grandi- 

 florus, though herein nurserymen have customers 

 pretty well at their mercy, and use them rather 

 unmercifully. It is exasperating to order a plant 

 of some particular species, and to find when it 

 flowers, perhaps years afterwards, that it is some 

 other and inferior kind. Within a few yards of my 

 front door is a large bush of what ought to be the 

 sweet-scented, autumn-flowering Clematis flammula, 

 for that is what I paid for ; instead of which it has 

 proved to be a worthless, scentless weed, grown so 

 lustily that it will take half a day's work to remove 

 it. 



Another Japanese plant, this time a valuable 

 winter-flowering shrub, in which one is very likely 

 to be deceived in the same way, is the beautiful 

 witch hazel (Hamamelis arborea). Time after time I 

 have received from tradesmen the American H. 

 wrginica, a plant of no merit whatever, and found 

 out too late that no crimson and yellow flowers 



