284 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 438. 



We find that it is a mistake to plant it in a position where 

 it gets flooded or submerged in winter. Some seedlings 

 three years old grown in an ordinary border are also in 

 flower. No Iris makes such a beautiful display as this, and 

 we are indebted to the Japanese gardeners for a wonderful 

 range of variation in color among the plants of it imported 

 from that country. According to Mr. Baker its correct 

 name is I. laevigata. 



Iris xiphioides. — The English Iris is one of the most 

 valuable of all bulbous plants to use for early summer 

 effect. It may be purchased for about three dollars a 

 thousand, and if planted in beds on a lawn in September it 

 grows and flowers as profusely as the freest of garden 

 Tulips. In some gardens it becomes naturalized, and I 

 have seen it come up among Potatoes, under Gooseberry- 

 bushes and promiscuously in the flower-beds with all the 

 persistency of a Dandelion. No Iris is more useful for cut- 

 flower purposes and no Iris looks more beautiful when 

 tastefully arranged in a vase. Every garden of any preten- 

 sions should have some beds of it. Almost equally valua- 

 ble is the Spanish Ins, I. Xiphium, which has smaller 

 flowers and blooms about a month earlier than the English 

 Iris. In some of our big metropolitan gardens these two 

 Irises are planted yearly in many thousands. They are so 

 cheap that one need scarcely trouble to lift them where 

 they are in danger of being hurt by cold or wet. At Kew 

 they are lifted toward the end of July and covered with dry 

 soil till planting time again. 



Dimorphotheca Echloni. — I noted this plant a few weeks 

 ago as a new introduction of promise from south Africa, 

 describing the flowers from collector's notes. Plants of it 

 are now in flower at Kew, and these prove the flowers to 

 be as large as those of the Paris Daisy, or Marguerite, 

 white, with a dull purple disk and the ray-florets tinged 

 with blue-purple on the under side. The partially opened 

 flowers are pretty in their variegated appearance, and when 

 fully expanded they are chaste and elegant. The plants 

 are about a foot high, branched freely, clothed with obo- 

 vate dark green fleshy leaves, and the flower-heads are 

 borne on erect axillary scapes about nine inches long. 

 Plants of it are flowering freely in a border out-of-doors 

 and in pots in a cold greenhouse. The species is said to 

 be a subshrubby perennial, but we do not know enough 

 about it to be able to say if it will prove perennial under 

 cultivation here. A figure of it will shortly be published in 

 The Botanical Magazine. 



Renanthera Storiei. — Reichenbach described this as a 

 new species in 1S80, when it flowered for the first time in 

 cultivation in the Clapton nursery of Messrs. Low & Co. It 

 is a native of the Philippines, and in floral beauty it sur- 

 passes the beautiful Chinese Renanthera coccinea, which it 

 resembles in habit and general appearance, differing in 

 having wider sepals and petals, and in color, R. coccinea 

 being uniform scarlet, while R. Storiei is crimson, with 

 blotches of a darker shade, and yellow lines on the side 

 lobes of the lip. A plant of it in flower was shown last 

 week by Sir Trevor Lawrence ; the spike was about 

 eighteen inches long, branched, and it bore about fifty 

 flowers, each two and a half inches across. A colored 

 figure of R. Storiei was published in Williams' Orchid Album 

 in February of this year, prepared from a plant flowered in 

 the Holloway nursery. R. Imschootiana is a third species 

 of similar character to the two above named. I described 

 this in Garden and Forest in July last year. 



Disas. — About four hundred spikes of Disa-flowers are 

 now a feature of the cool Orchid-house at Kew. They vary 

 in length from a foot to nearly three feet, and in the num- 

 ber of flowers upon each from a dozen to twenty. D. 

 Kewensis is the most beautiful, surpassing D. Veitchii in 

 the rich rose-pink of the flowers, the shorter scapes and the 

 much larger number of flowers upon each. D. Premier 

 and D. Langleyensis are also first-rate garden Orchids. 

 When grown as at Kew the two species, D. racemosa and 

 D. tripetaloides, are good decorative Orchids. Mr. H. 

 Bolus, the eminent Cape botanist, says these are much 



finer under cultivation here than he has ever seen them in 



a wild state. They all require cool-greenhouse treatment, 



plenty of water, an open peaty soil and shade from direct 



sunshine. As soon as the plants have flowered they are 



shaken out of the soil, the suckers taken off and potted 



singly in small pots and watered liberally. In November 



they are again potted into three-inch pots, in which they 



remain until they flower. They make a display of flowers 



for about two months. 

 London. W. Watson. 



New or Little-known Plants. 



Deutzia Lemoinei. 



THIS hybrid between Deutzia gracilis and Deutzia 

 parviflora was raised by Monsieur V. Lemoine, of 

 Nancy, and was exhibited by him in April, 1894, before the 

 French National Horticultural Society. Deutzia gracilis, 

 which is a low shrub with slender branches, lanceolate 

 leaves and short axillary racemes of white flowers, is a 

 native of the mountain valleys of southern Japan, and is 

 now one of the most popular garden shrubs, both in the 

 United States and England, although in the northern states 

 it suffers considerably from the cold of severe winters. 



Deutzia parviflora (see Garden and Forest, i., 263, f. 57) 

 is a native of northern China and Manchuria, and is a 

 hardier plant than Deutzia gracilis and the most beautiful 

 member of the genus which has been introduced into our 

 gardens, where it grows to the height of three or four feet, 

 with stout erect stems and compact corymbs of large white 

 flowers. The hybrid which Monsieur Lemoine has suc- 

 ceeded in raising between the two very distinct plants by 

 fertilizing the stigmas of Deutzia parviflora with the pollen 

 of Deutzia gracilis, is nearly intermediate between them. 

 The branches are stouter and more upright than those of 

 Deutzia gracilis and more numerous and shorter than those 

 of Deutzia parviflora. The flowers are about three-quarters 

 of an inch in diameter and are borne in loose many-flow- 

 ered panicles terminal on axillary leafy shoots, with pure 

 white broadly ovate rounded spreading petals and reddish 

 yellow stamens. Monsieur Lemoine has found that his 

 new hybrid forces well and believes that it will supplant 

 Deutzia gracilis for this purpose, as it surpasses it in beauty 

 and floriferousness. At Nancy, where Deutzia Lemoinei 

 has grown rapidly, it has proved very hardy, flowering in 

 different soils and exposures. 



Our illustration (see p. 285) is made from a plant which 

 flowered last winter under glass in the Arnold Arboretum. 

 Its value and hardiness in the open ground has not, we 

 believe, been satisfactorily tested yet in this country. 



Plant Notes. 



Acanthus longifolius. — This plant, from southern Europe, 

 has generally been treated as a greenhouse perennial, or, 

 at least, when grown in this country it has been provided 

 with the shelter of a cold frame during winter. So far as 

 we are aware, it has not been treated as hardy until Mr. 

 Cameron, of the Harvard Botanical Garden, two years ago 

 left some strong plants where they had grown in the border 

 during the summer, giving them no protection but a coat- 

 ing of Oak-leaves thrown about them after the ground 

 became frozen. Every one of these plants lived through 

 the winter and flowered beautifully last summer. Mr. 

 Cameron writes that these plants are now in first-rate con- 

 dition, with larger foliage and more numerous spikes than 

 they carried last year, and the plant has once more proved 

 that all it needs during the winter is a covering of the leaves 

 of Beech or some other trees. It is a stately plant, and its 

 immense leaves and curious spikes of rose-purple flowers 

 are very attractive. It needs a light rich soil and ought 

 not to be shaded in any way. 



Allium giganteum. — This plant, which came from cen- 

 tral Asia, is a difficult subject, to say the least, in this cli- 

 mate, and in some gardens it invariably refuses to flower. 



