March 25, 1896.] 



Garden and Forest. 



125 



V.accinium which has been cultivated at Kevv for the last 

 fifteen years and has flowered every year in a greenhouse 

 about this time of year (March). It is a beautiful plant ; the 

 arching stems, rising from a woody root-stock to a length 

 of five feet, are partly clothed with shining, green, myrtle-like 

 leaves and fringed for nearly their whole length with pen- 

 dent tubular flowers an inch long and colored blood-red, 

 with darker V-shaped lines. The flowers remain fresh 



Wkt.denia Candida. — I noted this plant in 1894, soon after 

 its introduction to Kew from Guatemala, where it occurs 

 only on the crater of the Vulcan de Agua. Since then it 

 has improved under cultivation, and it has been in flower 

 in a cold house along with Cape Heaths all winter. The 

 stems, which are about nine inches long, are formed of the 

 closely folded bases of the leaves, as in a Crinum, the leaf- 

 blades forming a spreading rosette about eight inches in 



Fig. 15. — Raid Cypress, Taxodium dislichum, in Bartrc 



upon the stems for about two months. Such a specimen 

 as this at Kew takes about twenty years to grow, but, once 

 acquired, it is a most valuable plant for the conservatory, 

 practically looking after itself if only a little water be given 

 to it now and then, and when it comes into flower it is 

 universally admired. It can be multiplied from cuttings of 

 the young branches. Mr. Elwes, who collected this plant 

 in the Himalayas, found it growing upon trees with 

 Ccelogynes, etc. 



diameter. The flowers are developed two or three at a 

 time from a central capitulum, each flower having a tube 

 two inches long and a spreading limb of three ovate con- 

 cave segments about an inch across ; they are of the purest 

 white, with a cluster of pale yellow anthers. The root- 

 stock is fleshy, and during the autumn the plants are 

 allowed to rest for about two months. The genus is mo- 

 notypic and is allied to Tradescantia. It is propagated by 

 division of the root-stock. 



