358 



THE GARDENERS 1 CHRONICLE. 



[September 29, 1888. 



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Now ready, in cloth, lis. 6d. 

 'HE GARDENERS' CHRONICLE, 



Vol. HI., Third Series. JAN. to JUNE. 1888. 

 W. RICHARDS. 41, Wellington Street. Strand. W.C. 



T 



APPOINTMENTS FOR THE ENSUING WEEK. 



Dutch Bulbs, at Stevens' Rooms. 



Dutch Bulbs, at Protheroe & 

 Morris' Rooms. 



Greenhouse Plants and Stock, st 

 the Kingston Nurseries. King- 

 ston (three days) by Protheroe & 

 Morris. 



Dutch Bulbs, at 123, Fenchureh 

 Street, by Messrs. Smail & Co. 



WEDNESDAY, 



THURSDAY, 



( Dutch Bulbs, at Stevens' Rooms. 

 OCT. 3-' Dutch Bulbs, at 123, Fenchureh 

 ( Street, by Messrs. Smail & Co. 

 i Dutch Bulbs, at Stevens' Rooms. 



("Imported and Established Orchids' 

 - ; at Protheroe & Morris' Rooms. 

 D ) Dutch Bulbs, at 123, Fenchureh 



( Street, by Messrs. Smail & Co. 



SATURDAY, Oc'J 



( Dutch Bulbs, at Stevens' Rooms. 

 6-' Dutch Bulbs, at Protheroe & Morrif 

 ( Rooms. 



Ot B American cousins, as many 



Transit of £ . , „ . . 



Fruit u k now > are S reat fruit growers 



and great fruit eaters. Nothing 

 surprises them more when they visit the old country 

 than the relative paucity of fruit on our tables 

 and the high price in the shops. We read occa- 

 sionally of Strawberry trains running distances 

 and carrying weights of fruit which to our 

 limited and circumscribed notions seem pro- 

 digious. 



At the recent Fruit Conferences the subjects 

 of fruit-transit and of fruit-conservation have 

 naturally not been lost sight of. In some 

 cases we have heard of fruit being sent 

 from Sittingbourne to London by barge in 

 order to avoid the high charges of the rail- 

 way company. But it is obvious that, how- 

 ever suitable this mode of transit may be for 

 hard fruits such as Apples, or even Plums, it is 

 not adapted for soft fruit like Strawberries 

 and Raspberries, for which some quicker 

 mode of conveyance must be adopted unless — in 

 deed, the barges could be fitted with refrigerating 

 chambers. Steam barges, or even steam-tugs 

 might be employed to abridge the period of 

 transit. On these points, however, we deemed it 

 desirable to know what was done by our Trans- 

 atlantic friends, and with this view we applied 

 to the Editor of the youngest, but by no means 

 the least influential, of horticultural journals — 

 Garden and Forest, with the following results, 

 which will be read with interest at the present 

 time : — 



"Strawberries," says Professor Sargent, "are 

 brought to market in special fast freight trains, but 

 generally in ordinary cars, when the run is not less 

 than fifteen hours, the trip usually being made at 

 night. When the fruit is packed on Saturday night, 

 and not delivered until Monday morning, especially 

 in New Jersey, the ordinary refrigerator cars, such 

 as are used to bring dressed beef from Chicago to the 

 seaboard, are used, the ice being put sometimes in the 

 ends of the car, and sometimes on the top. 



" Peaches are brought from Delaware and Southern 

 New Jersey at this season of the year to New York 



and Boston in special trains, generally run at night, 

 in ordinary cars, when they are sent longer distances, 

 say from New York to Chicago. 



" When the Michigan Peach [crop falls short, as is 

 often the case, then the fruit is packed in refrigerator 

 cars. Eighteen hours is probably the maximum distance 

 it pays to ship without ice, and, of course, a good deal 

 of fruit is lost even at this distance. But fruit is so 

 cheap in this country that dealers cannot afford to 

 spend much in getting it to market. Refrigerator 

 cars have been in use in this country for years, and 

 all English railway experts must know all about 

 them." 



Some years ago our excellent col- 

 HolHes league, the late Thomas Moobe, 



published in these columns an 

 excellent Monograph of Garden Hollies (see 

 Gardeners' Chronicle for 1874, 1875, and 1876). 

 His trained eye and long practice in the deter- 

 mination and classification of the endless varieties 

 of Ferns, in which the distinctions are more 

 minute than in Hollies, served him in good stead, 

 so that, by the aid of his terse, but accurate, de- 

 scriptions aided by numerous figures, it is, in 

 general, not a very difficult, though it may prove 

 a long task, to name a Holly. The variations 

 are exceedingly interesting, not only on account 

 of their numbers and their ornamental character, 

 but because they illustrate the extent to which 

 one species may vary unaffected by hybridisation 

 and the direct action of external conditions. The 

 common Ivy and the Chinese Primrose furnish 

 other illustrations of a capacity to vary, for, in 

 many cases, no better reason that we can assign 

 than " because it is their nature to." In some 

 instances external conditions may have some 

 effect, but when we see a score or a hundred 

 varieties all produced under like circumstances, 

 perhaps all seedlings from one tree, and growing 

 together under like conditions, it becomes hard to 

 see that the circumstances can have much to do 

 with the variability. In some cases the variations 

 represent the form peculiar or proper to certain 

 stages of growth, as, for instance, in the Ivy, where, 

 as Mr. Shirley Hibberd pointed out, the forms 

 peculiar to the flowering or adult period are 

 often quite distinct from those assumed during 

 the " wild oat " period of bachelor growth among 

 Ivies. In the Holly the variation is first of all 

 into forms with purple or with green shoots. 

 As to the leaves, they vary greatly in size, 

 in colour, in flatness, in the amount and disposi- 

 tion of the spines, in the twisted or hooded 

 character, and in various other matters to which 

 it is not necessary now to allude in detail. Are 

 they not all set forth in the monograph to which 

 we have referred ? Turning to the flowers, we 

 must remind the reader that the Holly is, bo- 

 tanioally speaking, polygamous. Some of the 

 flowers are male, bearing stamens only ; some 

 female, bearing pistils only ; some hermaphrodite, 

 with both stamens and pistils, but when both are 

 present in the same flower it by no means follows 

 that the pollen exerts any influence on the pistil 

 with which it happens to be associated in the 

 same flower, and vice versa. It may, and does 

 happen, that a particular tree bears male flowers 

 constantly, and then no berries are to be ex- 

 pected on that tree. Another tree may bear all 

 female flowers, and its pistils may ripen 

 into fruit by the agency of the pollen- 

 bearing flowers on neighbouring trees. These 

 characteristics are tolerably constant, but 

 sometimes vagaries occur, and a plant that here- 

 tofore has borne stamens only becomes covered 

 with berries, or a plant that is usually covered 

 with berries fails to produce any. These varia- 

 tions in the sexual characteristics, though com- 

 mon enough, always excite astonishment, some- 



times even from the growers of Mulberries, 

 Cucumbers, and Marrows, who might be expected 

 to be familiar with such variations. 



Mr. Cboucheb, of the Gardens, Ochtertyre, 

 lately favoured us with a scries of splendid speci- 

 mens representative of the varieties of Holly 

 under his charge, and which represented a large 

 number of the forms described by Mr. Moore. 

 But the point of special interest was the indi- 

 cation given by Mr. Croucheb, of those forms 

 that do and those that do not, or have not, pro- 

 duced berries. We subjoin Mr. Cboucher's 

 list, merely stating that care must be taken not 

 to assume that the Hollies in the fourth column 

 were all exclusively male plants. The non-pro- 

 duction of berries may, in some cases at least, 

 have been due to other than structural causes. 

 The numbers are those of Mr. Moobe's mono- 



Icaves Green. 





Not 

 flowered. 



Flowered 



Flowered 





and not 

 berried. 



and 



berried. 



1, nobilis 





X 





3, grandifolia 







X 



4, latifolia ... 



X 







5, Hodgensii 





X 





6, platyphylla 







X 



7, belgica ... 







X 



8, rigida 







X 



9, alcicornis 





X 





12, fructu-luteo 







X 



14, costata ... 







X 



15, Eisheri 





X 





16, heterophvlla 





X 





18, Beetii 



X 







19, handsworthensis . 





X 





20, Smithiana 





X 





22, whittingtonensis . 









23, donningtonensis . 





X 





24, myrtifolia 



X 







25, serratifolia 



X 







26, recurva ... 



X 







27, hastata ... 



X 







31, maderensis 







X 



38, Henderson! 







X 



39, ovata 





X 





40, Foxii 





X 





41, ciliata major 





X 





43, crassifolia 



X 







50, laurifolia... 





X 





53, integrifolia 







X 



54, scotica ... 







X 



55, trapeziformis 





X 





57, tortuosa ... 



X 







59, ferox 





X 





56, latispina 



X 







32, balearica 







X 



Leaves Silver-variegated. 



margi- 

 medio- 

 hands- 



argentea marginata 

 major... 



argentea regina . . . 



argentea varians. . . 



argentea 

 tissima 



argentea 

 nata . 



argentea 

 picta . 



argentea 

 worthensis 



argentea pur- 



purea ... 



araenteaobscura... 



argentea pectinata 

 major (?) 



argentea pectinata 

 minor 



argentea lauri- 

 folia 



argentea sul- 



phurea 



argentea ferox ... 



