386 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 290. 



feet through and fifteen feet high. It was not even in an 

 enclosure, but stood on a piece of waste ground by the 

 side of the road. I saw it in full flower, and there were 

 hundreds of very large racemes of trumpet-shaped flowers 

 quite three inches long and broad, colored bright rosy-lilac, 

 with a few darker pencilings and a blotch of yellow in the 

 throat. The mass was a glorious picture, such as I had 

 never seen made by any Bignoniaceous plant. We have 

 tried to get it to bloom at Kew, but, although it grows as 

 freely as Ivy in a cool, sunny greenhouse, it has never pro- 

 duced any flowers. Last year some cuttings of it were 

 struck and treated in the way that has made other species 

 of Tecoma bloom when small, namely, by restricting 

 the roots and placing the plants in a sunny position 

 out-of-doors all summer ; in the autumn the shoots pro- 

 duce bloom. Of course, these small plants do not form such 

 enormous racemes as do large specimens. I have no 

 doubt that in the southern states of North America T. 

 Mackenii would grow outside and flower as freely as it 



say of the order Leguminoseae itself, for it grows rapidly, 

 forms a loose, elegant shrub three to five feet high, clothed 

 with gray-green pinnate leaves six inches long, and bears 

 numerous axillary erect racemes a foot or so long, of pea- 

 like flowers nearly an inch across and colored rosy-purple, 

 with a yellow blotch on the standard. They have been 

 aptly compared to the flower-spikes of Swainsonia galegi- 

 folia. Every leaf axil develops a raceme, and thus there is 

 a continuous display of flowers from May to September. It 

 was introduced about ten years ago from the deserts of 

 southern Mongolia. A figure of it may be seen in Garten- 

 flora, t. 1 122. For sunny positions in light or, indeed, al- 

 most any kind of soil, this shrub has special value. It ap- 

 pears to be quite hardy, at any rate the plants at Kew in a 

 sunny border have not been injured by the severe frosts of 

 the last few years. 



y^iscuLus PARviFLORA, or, as it is better known in our cat- 

 alogues, Pavia macrostachya, is one of the most ornamental 

 of all the Horse-chestnut family. I suspect it is common 



does in south Africa. Flowers of this species were sent to 

 Kew three years ago by Mr. Hanbury from his garden at 

 Mentone, on the Riviera. The only figure of the plant of 

 which I know is a very poor one in the Bulletin of the Tus- 

 can Horticultural Society for 1887, where it is called T. Rica- 

 soliana, having been figured from a plant flowered in the 

 garden of Monsieur Ricasoli, at Casta Bianca, Monte Ar- 

 gentario, in 1886. This plant was said to have been 

 raised from seeds sent from Buenos Ayres, and this sug- 

 gests that it has been introduced as a garden-plant into that 

 country. It has also been distributed under the name of 

 T. rosea, Mr. Bull describing it under this name among 

 his new plants of 1886 as "a remarkably handsome green- 

 house climber, imported from south Africa, with opposite 

 pinnate leaves and magnificent racemes three to four feet 

 in length, of large, showy trumpet-shaped flowers of a 

 rosy-lilac color." There is a plant at Kew which was sent 

 from Grahamstown in 1879 under the name of T. Mackenii. 

 Hedysarum multijugum is one of the most ornamental of 

 the hardy shrubby species of Hedysarum, one might almost 



enough and in favor in North America, but it is neither the 

 one nor the other in England, notwithstanding its good 

 nature and floriferousness. Specimens eight feet high and 

 wide have been pictures at Kew for the last six weeks, but 

 by most visitors they have been looked upon as botanical 

 rarities only. It has been in cultivation in England 

 nearly eighty years. 



Eucryphia pinnatifolia flowered freely a few weeks ago, 

 but it appears to dislike bright sunshine and hot dry 

 weather, the plants at Kew having suffered recently in 

 spite of copious waterings during the drought. I suspect 

 all of these Chilian shrubs prefer a position where there is 

 not much bright sunlight and a good deal of moisture. 

 Such, at any rate, suits the Lapageria, Philensia, Tricuspi- 

 daria and Berberidopsis coralHna. This last is growing 

 well, and has flowered profusely this year on a wall facing 

 east. Eucryphia Billardieri has lost every leaf through the 

 scorching heat of the last fortnight. It is planted against a 

 south wall, a position which, from its habitat, Tasmania, 

 ought not to have been too hot for it. 



