94 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 419. 



play of flowers for a month or more in the dawn of the 

 year. 



Iris stylosa. — This beautiful and deliciously fragrant Iris 

 has been flowering freely in the open air at Kew since the 

 middle of December, and is likely to keep on till well into 

 the spring. Planted against the south wall of a greenhouse, 

 with its roots pressing against the bricks, it has formed 

 dense tufts of elegant linear leaves a foot or so high, and 

 rising among or above these are numerous flowers of a 

 lavender-blue, blue-purple or white color, and varying in 

 size from four inches to two inches in diameter. There are 

 some half a dozen named varieties, all beautiful, all very 

 fragrant, and a bunch of them in a vase in a room in mid- 

 winter is in every sense a delight. They last three or four 

 days if cut just as they are unfolding, and they are pro- 

 duced in such abundance that half a dozen plants will keep 

 up a constant supply of cut flowers if the weather be not 

 too severe. Although an old species, this Iris is compara- 

 tively little known, probably because it will not thrive 

 away from a south wall. The Kew plants were placed in 

 their present position as an experiment, and it has proved 

 a perfect success. The species is wild in Algeria, and I 

 believe it is grown by the Scilly nurserymen. I see it is 

 called I. unguicularis by Mr. Baker. 



Blue Primroses. — A purple-blue-flowered sport from the 

 common Primrose, Primula vulgaris, has for several years 

 past been in the possession of Mr. G. F. Wilson, of Wey- 

 bridge, but it has lately passed into the hands of Messrs. J. 

 Veitch & Sons, who now hold a fine stock of it, and by 

 whom a large batch of it was shown at the Royal Horti- 

 cultural Society's meeting this week. In foliage, vigor and 

 floriferousness the blue-flowered variety does not differ 

 from the type, and it grows freely out-of-doors wherever 

 the common Primrose thrives. The plants shown had been 

 lifted from the open ground and planted in five inch pots, 

 each with a tuft of rich green leaves and from twenty to 

 thirty open flowers. The color varied from a rich purple- 

 blue, nearly true blue, in fact, to deep purple and lavender, 

 a ring of yellow or red occurring at the mouth of the tube 

 in some of the varieties. 1 learn from Messrs. Veitch that 

 about twenty per cent, come blue from seed. A senti- 

 mental objection was raised to a blue Primrose because it 

 was said a Primrose should be yellow, but I am of opinion 

 that these blue Primroses will become popular for the gar- 

 den in spring. 



Cyrtanthus parviflorus. — This species was described by 

 Mr. Baker in 1S91 from specimens flowered in England 

 and others collected in the Transvaal. A beautiful example 

 of it was shown at the Drill Hall this week by Mr. Woodall, 

 of Scarborough, who grows it in a cool greenhouse, 

 where it is as floriferous and free as Cyrtanthus Mackenii. 

 The genus may be divided for horticultural purposes into 

 two groups, namely, one represented by C. Mackenii, C. 

 lutescens and C. parviflorus, which are as easily managed 

 as Lachenalias ; the other, represented by C. rectiflorus and 

 C. Macowani, which are beautiful in flower, but difficult to 

 cultivate. The addition of C. parviflorus to the easily man- 

 aged lot is a decided gain. It produces leaves and flowers 

 together, the former being bright green, linear and a foot 

 long, the latter in elegant umbels of about a dozen borne 

 on scapes eighteen inches long ; each flower is tubular, an 

 inch and a half long and colored bright scarlet. The plant 

 was well worthy of a first-class certificate. I can recom- 

 mend this for its red flowers, C. Mackenii for its white and 

 C. lutescens for its yellow flowers, as good useful green- 

 house plants. 



Lachenalia Nelsoni. — When well grown this is one of the 

 most useful of all spring-flowering bulbous plants for the 

 greenhouse. It was raised by the gentleman after whom it is 

 named about twelve years ago from Lachenalia aurea crossed 

 with L. tricolor, and it combines the best qualities of both. 

 In the garden of Lord Suffield, Gunton Park, Norwich, it is 

 grown better than usual, a group of plants sent by him to 

 the Drill Hall this week exhibiting excellent cultivation. 

 The) 7 were in six-inch pots, which were almost hidden by 



the drooping foliage, and each pot contained from twenty 

 to thirty scapes a foot high, and each bearing about twenty 

 expanded flowers of a deep glistening yellow color, the few 

 globose buds at the apex of each scape being colored bright 

 red. I told the story of Lachenalias and their cultivation 

 in Garden and Forest about a year ago. They are of that 

 class of plants which are apt to be overlooked by cultiva- 

 tors or discarded as weedy and unsatisfactory through 

 initial failure with them. When once understood, however, 

 they are very easily managed and they are worth growing 

 for the supply of cut flowers in early spring. 



The Garden Cineraria. — A few months ago a spirited dis- 

 cussion was carried on in several scientific journals with 

 reference to the origin of the popular greenhouse Cinera- 

 rias, some authorities holding that they are the product of 

 several species crossed in the early part of the present cen- 

 tury, while others held that, although there was no evi- 

 dence of a hybrid origin in the plants themselves, there 

 was plenty to show their close relationship with the annual 

 C. cruenta of the Canaries. To test the two theories, C. 

 cruenta was crossed at Kew with the garden Cenerarias, 

 a similar cross being made by Messrs. Veitch. The plants 

 obtained are now in flower at Kew and in the Chelsea nur- . 

 sery, and some of the latter were exhibited this week 

 under the name of C. Langleyensis. There is no essential 

 difference between these and the common garden kinds ; 

 indeed, beyond being a few inches taller and having flow- 

 ers a trifle smaller and looser, they do not differ at all. On 

 the other hand, a cross between the garden Cineraria and 

 C. L'Heritieri, the other hypothetical parent of the garden 

 race, is now in flower at Kew, and this is widely different in 

 habit and flowers. Here we have strong evidence of a 

 negative character in support of the view that C. cruenta 



is the sole parent of the gfarden Cineraria. .. r ... 

 London. '»■ Watson. 



New or Little-known Plants. 



Noiina recurvata. 



A SPECIMEN of this south Mexican Liliaceous plant 

 in Professor Sargent's garden, in Brookline, near 

 Boston, has flowered this winter, this being the first 

 time that this species has flowered in the United States, 

 so far as we have been able to learn. In Septem- 

 ber, 1 86 1, a plant in the garden of Monsieur Beaucarne, 

 at Eename, in Belgium, produced a panicle of stami- 

 nate flowers. This is the only other case we find recorded 

 of this species flowering in cultivation, although, as it was 

 introduced into Europe in 1845 by Van der Maelen, of 

 Brussels, and widely disseminated in gardens many years 

 ago, its flowering in those of southern France or Italy may 

 not be an uncommon occurrence, especially as an allied 

 species, Noiina longifolia, frequently blooms on the 

 Riviera. 



Noiina is a genus of about a dozen species distributed 

 from the south Atlantic states and Texas to southern Mexico 

 and Lower California, distinguished by its arborescent or 

 abbreviated caudex, elongated unarmed leaves, and po- 

 lygamo-dicecious flowers produced in loosely racemose or 

 compound panicles with lanceolate bracts and bractlets. 

 The flowers are small, greenish white and articulated on 

 slender pedicels in one to four flowered clusters ; the peri- 

 gone is campanulate and composed of six nearly equal 

 spreading oblong-ovate segments ; the stamens, which are 

 usually described as shorter than the segments of the peri- 

 gone, are in Noiina recurvata nearly twice as long ; they 

 are inserted on the base of the segments, and composed of 

 tapering filaments and ovate or oblong versatile anthers 

 attached on the back, and in the pistillate flower reduced 

 to anantherous staminodia ; the ovary, which in the stami- 

 nate flower is abortive or wanting, is sessile, three-celled, 

 with three nearly sessile or short-stalked stigmas and two 

 ovules ascending from the bottom of each cell. The fruit 

 is thin and dry, usually three-winged, indehiscent, although 



