

156 



THE GARDENERS CHRONICLE. 



[March 9, 1912 



Flowers in Season.— We have received some 

 remarkably fine flowers of a dark red, anemone- 



centred Camellia from Sir Albert Rollit, 

 LL.D., gathered from a tree in the open garden, 

 bearing altogether 150 expanded blossoms. 



layer on the walls, produces the black colour of 

 the warty-walled galleries. These black areas 

 are capable of absorbing considerable quantities 

 of water. The ants, though they frequent all 

 parts of the galleries, place their pupae on the 

 fungus-free yellow walls, and are careful to de- 



Gardeners- Royal Benevolent Institu- posit their excrement only in the fungus-affected 

 (Liverpool Auxiliary).— The annual black parts of the galleries. Though it is easy 



TION 



making concert in aid of the funds of the Gar- to speculate as to the significance of these ex- 



deners' Royal Benevolent Institution, promoted traordinary relations between plant, fungus and 



by the Liverpool Auxiliarv, was held on the 27th ant, it must be admitted that we have as yet 



ult. under the chairmanship of the Lord Mayor insufficient evidence on which to base our specu- 



of Liverpool (Lord Derby). The Auxiliary has re- lationa. We can only wonder at the manifold 



cently forwarded to the treasurer of the Institu- contrivances of nature. 



tion the sum of £50, making a total of £510 lis. 

 as the contributions from friends in the Liverpool 

 district during the past 10 years. 



and, with one exception, were all found to have- 

 lost their astringency and to have become per- 

 fectly palatable. Lloyd is of opinion that the 

 gas has a specific action, and that the dis- 

 appearance of the soluble tannin is due 

 to the coagulation of a colloid substance 

 with which the tannin is chemically asso- 

 ciated. The carbon-dioxide seems to ac- 

 celerate all the processes of ripening except 

 coloration, for a Persimmon fruit does not change- 

 from yellow to the normal ripe colour of deep, 

 orange under the influence of the artificial pro- 

 cess. It is possible that these discoveries may 

 find a practical application in this country in sea- 

 sons when, owing to inclement weather, fruit 



Artificial Ripening of Fruits. — A recent fails to ripen satisfactorily, 

 issue of the American periodical Science contains 



Flora of the Upper Gangetic Plain. 



Protection from Birds.— In the recent 



Essay Competition on the protection of agricol- ficial "pening or "processing 



tural and horticultural crops from attacks by deserving of the notice of horticultures 



birds, instituted by the Royal Society for the 

 Protection of Birds, eight of the essays sent in 

 were chosen as first-class. These are placed in 

 their order of merit : — 1st prize, E. Purnell 

 Jones, Crewe; 2nd prize, Edwin James Platt, 

 The Gardens, Borden Wood, Liphook; Nelson 

 Rooke, Risby, Bury St. Edmunds; Francis J. 

 Lansdell, Inglewood Nursery, West Moors, 

 Dorset; Wm. Mason, Tuddenham, near Ipswich, 

 and Geo. Frisby, Quorn, Loughborough ; John 

 James, Cromere Farm, Felinfach, Cardiganshire, 

 and Thos. Benj. Smith, Hewelsfield, St. Briand's. 

 The judges were G. L. Courthope, Esq., M.P. ; 

 Chas. F. Archibald, Esq., lecturer in agricul- 

 ture at Leeds University, and Frank P. Havi- 

 land, Esq. The prizes are to be presented at the 

 annual meeting of the Society, which takes place 

 on March 5 at the Westminster Palace Hotel, by 

 her Highness the Ranee of Sarawak (Lady 

 Brooke), when his Grace the Duke of Rutland 



will take the chair. 



Apples from Australia The first shipment 



of Victorian Apples has just been despatched 

 to the home markets. The quality of the fruit is 

 said to be remarkably good, although at the 

 present it looks as if the volume of the Apple 

 exports this season will be slightly below that 

 of last y 



The Papaw in Queensland. — The Queens- 

 land Agricultural Journal for January, 1912, 

 contains an illustration of a Papaw tree (Carica 

 Papaya) bearing 130 fruits, ranging from 2 lbs. 

 to 4 lbs. each in weight. The plant is only 12 

 months old, and is growing in the garden of Mr. 

 J. C. Harrington, Ascot, Queensland. 



Ant Plants. — Few, if any, plants are more 

 remarkable than the so-called myrmecophilous, or 

 ant-plants, among which are the Javanese species 

 Myrmecodia tuberosa and Hydnophytum monta- 

 nmn. These Rubiaceous plants are epiphytic, 

 and possess tuberous stems of nearly a foot in 

 diameter, which are chambered up into galleries 

 generally infested with certain kinds of ants. 

 Treub showed long ago that the galleries are 

 not formed in consequence of the presence of the 

 ants, but occurred in the absence of these ani- 

 mals. Recent investigations of these wonderful 



an article by Mr. F. E. Lloyd, of the Alabama 



Experimental Station, on the subject of the arti- Mr. J. F. Duthie's descriptive work on the 



of fruit, and is plants of the Indian District, of which Saharan- 



The pur and Dehra Deen may be considered the 



article is mainly concerned with experiments on centre, has now reached the first part of the 



Fig. 66. — blickling hall, Norfolk. 



plants by H. Miehe are summarised by Mr. fruit rapidly disappears. 



Persimmons, but it is clear that the results at- 

 tained are applicable to other fruits. It 

 appears that attention was first drawn to the 

 subject by a practice followed by the Japanese 

 for the ripening of the Persimmon fruit. It 

 has been customary in Japan to pack this fruit 

 in barrels which have recently contained Sake, 

 the well-know r n spirit largely consumed by the 

 Japanese. Under the influence of the Sake 

 fumes, or possibly, as Lloyd suggests, owing to 

 the absence of oxygen, the astringency of the 



It has been found that 



second volume, pp. 1-266. It contains the- 

 families Plumbaginaceae to Plantaginese in the 

 sequence of Bentham and Hooker's Genera 

 Plantarum. The first part of this publication 

 appeared in 1903, and its completion has been 

 retarded through the indifferent health of the 

 author. The area embraced is partly sub- 

 tropical, partly temperate, and the herbaceous- 

 and shrubby elements — —»—*■»-«♦. The 



Botting Hemsley in Nature February 29, 1912. 

 Miehe has shown that, in addition to the ants, 

 the hollow chambers of the tuberous stem of 

 Myrmecodia and Hydnophytum are occupied 

 also by a fungus, probably a species of Clado- 

 SDorium or Cladotrichum. ' The walls of the oral 



Bananas can be ripened if kept in an atmosphere 

 deprived of oxygen, and that Dates can be " pro- 

 cessed " and finished for the market by exposing 

 them to the fumes of acetic acid. Lloyd now 

 announces that the process can be hastened by 

 treating the fruit with carbon-dioxide under 



leries are, so to speak, decorated in two colours : pressure. In an experiment with Persimmons 



six dozen of the unripe fruit were placed in an 

 autoclave from which the air was expelled and 



in certain parts they are smooth and yellow, in 

 others black and warted. The messmates of 

 these ant plants affect one or other part of the replaced by carbon-dioxide at a pressure of 15 lbs. 



» 



galleries. The fungus, indeed, forming a thick In less than 48 hours the fruits were removed, 



aim D uiuuuj ciciuciuo are prominent. 

 Scrophulariaceae, Acanthaceae and Lamiacese are 

 numerously represented ; yet there is no genus 

 in any family numbering more than five or six 

 species, except Heliotropium, eight; Ipomoea, 

 twelve 5 and Leucas, nine. A very large propor- 

 tion of the genera is represented by only one 

 to three species each. Of the Acanthaceae there 

 are 25 genera and only 51 species; quite excep- 

 tional proportions. Among the trees of this re- 

 gion is the Teak, Tectona grandis, which is 

 fully described, but all reference to its distribu- 

 tion, properties, and similar matters is wanting, 

 whereas of the allied valuable timber tree, 

 Gmelina arborea, full particulars are given. 





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