1 84 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 270. 



to be congratulated on having added such a handsome 

 plant to the many beautiful stove-plants which we owe to 

 his energy as an introducer of new things. 



Fritillaria Whittallii is a new species, which is now 

 in flower at Kew, and which has been named in compli- 

 ment to its discoverer, Mr. E. Whittall, who found it in 

 Smyrna and sent it to Kew last year. It is similar to the 

 conmion Snake's-head (F. meleagris), differing chiefly in its 

 shorter segments and dull brownish color. F. meleagris is 

 now beautiful in a large round bed on one of the lawns at 

 Kew with its nodding flowers on stalks a foot long, some 

 white, some reddish or brown and spotted, all elegant and 

 pleasing both in form and color. It is a good companion 

 to the Daffodils, Hyacinths, etc. 



Cyrtanthus intermedius. — This is a new hybrid of garden 

 origin which has been raised in Mr. Bull's nursery, its 

 parents being C. angustifolius and C. Mackenii, both of 

 them small, narrow-leaved species with slender scapes a 

 foot long bearing a few-flowered umbel of narrow tubular 

 flowers, two inches long, colored bright red in C. angusti- 

 folius, white in C. Mackenii. In the hybrid the flowers are 

 rose-colored, slightly suffused with green. If the hybrid 

 inherits the adaptability to cultivation of C. Mackenii it will 

 be a useful plant for the cool greenhouse, but if it is any- 

 thing like as difficult to keep in health as C. angustifolius 

 it will not find many admirers. C. lutescens is similar in 

 habit to and quite as well behaved under cultivation as C. 

 Mackenii, and its flowers are colored bright yellow. The 

 above is the second hybrid Cyrtanthus raised in gardens, 

 the first being the remarkable C. hybridus raised by Sir 

 Trevor Lawrence a few years ago from C. sanguineus and 

 Vallota purpurea. There are evidences in England of a re- 

 vived interest in bulbous plants from South Africa. Only 

 this week I have been consulted by two amateurs who had 

 imported collections of them from the Cape, and wished to 

 know how the less well-known kinds should be treated. 



Vellozia equisetifolia. — I quote the following note from 

 R. W. Adlum, Transvaal, which appeared in the Gardeners' 

 Chronicle of April ist, as it refers to a most interesting 

 plant which was introduced to Kew a few years ago and 

 has since been distributed under the name of "Witsenia 

 species": "Imagine a stout Draecena-like stem two feet 

 high, crowned with long, drooping grass-like leaves, inter- 

 spersed with many solitary pendent pale blue Zephyr- 

 anthes-like flowers, four inches across. No one at first sight 

 would take this fine plant to be an Amaryllid, since root, 

 stem and leaves are like those of Dracaena. It is a very 

 rare plant in Natal and the Cape, and is only found here in 

 the driest and most rocky places, at great elevations, gen- 

 erally about 6,000 feet. About six years ago I collected 

 seeds of this plant and sent it to Professor McOwan, of the 

 Cape Town Botanical Gardens, who in turn forwarded it 

 to Kew. It is a plant that transplants very badly." Some 

 time ago I drew the attention of readers of Garden and 

 Forest to the interest and beauty of the Vellozias and Bar- 

 bacenias, which are now scarcely known in gardens. The 

 perpetual-flowering Barbacenia squamata is now bearing 

 numbers of its bright vermilion flowers in one of the stoves 

 at Kew, where it has been represented by a fine specimen 

 for the last three years. This plant has matured plenty of 

 seeds from which numerous seedlings have been raised and 

 distributed. 



Aglaonema versicolor is a new stove Aroid lately intro- 

 duced from the east by Mr. W. Bull. It is described by 

 Dr. Masters as a small plant having an erect stem, bearing 

 beautifully mottled, short-stalked, spreading leaves, the 

 blade four inches long by two inches in width, irregularly 

 blotched with patches of dark velvety green interspersed 

 among patches of lighter green and some of milky white. 

 It has not yet flowered, so that its name is only provisional. 

 Hypolytrum Schroederianum is another of Mr. Bull's new 

 introductions, and a very promising plant for tropical 

 houses. It is a Sedge, and forms a handsome tuft a yard 

 high, the leaves over two inches wide, purplish at the base, 



the upper portion green, with dark red margins. This plfint 

 will be useful for aquaria. 



Tamarix kashgarica. — This is a new plant offered by 

 Monsieur Lemoine & Son, of Nancy, who describe it in 

 their catalogue as having been discovered by Roborowsky 

 in central Asia, and as differing in aspect from the other 

 species of the genus. It has small glaucous green leaves 

 imbricated as in a Lycopodium. It has not yet flowered 

 under cultivation. Messrs. -Lemoine do not say to what 

 size it grows, or whether it is hardy with them, but from 

 the brief description they give of the plant it appears to be 

 worth looking after. . : 



Galanthus maximus. — This is another new species of 

 Snowdrop, which Mr. Baker describes as being " remarka- 

 ble for its very robust habit, large leaves, spathe and flower 

 and long pedicel. " Its bulbs are so large that they have 

 been mistaken for those of Narcissus, and its leaves are 

 broad, glaucous, with recurved edges. Its flowers are as 

 large as those of G. nivalis, van Imperati. Mr. Baker 

 thinks that, if not a true species, it is probably a hybrid be- 

 tween G. plicatus and G. nivalis. 



New Dendrobiums. — Dendrobium Wardianum album ob- 

 tained a first-class certificate last week, and deserved it. 

 The pure white of the sepals and petals and the delicate 

 markings of the lip, which had the yellow blotches, but 

 only a faint indication of the maroon eye-like spots found 

 in the type in a flower of full size, place this among the 

 choicest of the forms of this fine species. It was shown by 

 Mr. W. R. Lee, of Audenshaw. D. Bryan was raised by 

 Mr. Cookson from D. luteolum and D. Wardianum, and it 

 obtained a first-class certificate when shown in flower last 

 week. Mr. Cookson's hybrids are, as a rule, of first-rate 

 merit, and this is no exception. It has slender stems two 

 feet high, primrose-colored flowers with purple-tipped 

 sepals, and a red-brown blotch and lines on the large lip. 

 D. Sybil is another of Mr. Cookson's hybrids, raised from 

 D. bigibbum and D. Linavvianum. It has the general habit 

 of D. nobile, to which D. Linawianum is closely allied; 

 the flowers have deep purple sepals, purple and white 

 petals, and the lip white, with blotches of yellow and crim- 

 son. It obtained a certificate. D. Benita, a hybrid between 

 D. aureum and D. Falconeri, raised by Mr. Brymer, M.P. 

 Its flowers, which are nearly four inches across, are very 

 similar to those of D. Ainsworthii, which was raised from 

 the same parents. 



London. 



W. Watson, 



Plant Notes. 



x\cokanthera spectabilis. 



ALTHOUGH it is over twenty years since this plant 

 was introduced into English gardens by Mr. B. S. 

 Williams, of HoUoway, and highly recommended to horti- 

 culturists by Dr. Masters as a beautiful, fragrant winter- 

 flowering stove-plant, it has yet attained comparatively 

 little popularity. It forms a shapely shrub if grown in a 

 pot and judiciously pruned, or it may be grown against a 

 pillar or as a roof climber ; in any position it is a success 

 if only it gets plenty of sunlight all the year round. In the 

 Palm-house at Kew there is a plant of it (see fig. 30, p. 185) 

 trained against the glass, which makes long shoots every 

 year, which in midwinter are wreaths of white Ixora-like 

 flowers, as odoriferous as Gardenia or Jasmine. In the 

 same house there are specimens grown in pots, and these 

 flower most profusely. This species is quite as healthy in 

 a greenhouse as in a stove, the difference being that in the 

 cooler house the leaves become purplish in winter, the shoots 

 are shorter and the flowers do not develop until March. 



According to Hooker, A. spectabilis is a native of the 

 western districts of South Africa, from Albany to Port 

 Natal, where it forms a large shrub, with masses of white 

 fragrant flowers, on woody sand-hills near the sea. There 

 is only one other species, namely, A. Thunbergii, which 

 has been in cultivation over a century, and which is almost 

 as serviceable as A. spectabilis, differing in the shape and 



