May 14, 1890.] 



Garden and Forest. 



237 



for a plant otLivistona Sinensis, which, he said, was unknown 

 to him. These Palms are the easiest of plants to accommo- 

 date when young; they may be grown huddled up together in 

 a manner that would be fatal to most plants, and they grow 

 into nice little plants in three years. They can be watered 

 with the hose or large rose watering can, and they may safely 

 be left to the care of a boy or garden laborer. I am informed 

 that many of these English-grown Palms find buyers in 

 America. 



Whilst on the subject of Palms I may refer to the very in- 

 teresting and instructive paper on " Exotic Palms in Florida," 

 by Mr. T. L. Mead (see Garden and Forest, p. 175). If any 

 one wishes to know how much or how little a knowledge of 

 geographical botany may be expected to assist the cultivator 

 in regard to questions of temperature he cannot do better 

 than study Mr. Mead's report on the effects of from nine to 

 eleven degrees of frost on the plants he enumerates. Areca 

 sapida, a native of New Zealand, lost every leaf, whilst Elaeis 

 Gui?iiensis and Raphia vinifera, both from the equatorial 



and which is in the collection of Baron Schroeder. It resem- 

 bles the type in every character except color. The sepals and 

 petals are flushed with lilac, and the reflexed portion of the 

 labellum is colored dull bluish purple. It is more curious 

 than beautiful. The plant appeared in the collection of 

 Monsieur Vinck some three years ago, and it has shown the 

 same peculiar color in its flowers every year since. 



Dendrobium MacCarthi>e. — This magnificent plant is now 

 flowering freely at Kew. It is one of the least common in 

 gardens from the fact of its being bad to cultivate. It is found 

 only in Ceylon, where it is much less plentiful now than it was 

 a few years ago, owing, probably, to the visitations of the 

 Orchid - collector. The Kew plants have this year made 

 pseudo-bulbs over a yard long, and they bear near the top 

 pendulous, three-flowered racemes, each flower being four 

 inches across when fully expanded ; the color is pale rosy 

 mauve, with a large blotch of maroon-purple on the lower 

 part of the lip, and streaks of the same color on the front por- 

 tion. The Kew plants are grown in a very hot, moist stove, 



Fig. 37. — Buckleya distichophylla. — See page 236. 



1. Flowering branch of the staminate plant, natural size. 2. Flowering branch o£ the pistillate plant, natural size. 3. Fruiting branch, natural size. 



4. Staminate flower, enlarged. 5. Vertical section of a staminate flower, enlarged. 6. Pistillate flower, enlarged. 7. Vertical section o£ a pistillate flower, enlarged. 



8. Vertical section of a seed, somewhat enlarged. 9. Embryo, much magnified. 



swamp regions of Africa, were in the one case partly cut back, 

 in the other untouched. Two Palms from the hot, moist cli- 

 mate of the Sechelles — Latania Commersoni and L. Lod- 

 digesii, and Phcenix paludosa from the hot swamps of Bengal, 

 were "all unhurt." Hyophorbe Verschaffeltii and a Dypsis, 

 both from Mauritius, also escaped serious injury. These 

 Palms are found wild only in the hottest of tropical countries, 

 where frost would be unknown to them, yet they suffer less 

 from frost than many plants, such as the Chilian Guava, the 

 Cape Tecoma, Peaches, Oranges and even Roses, which when 

 wild annually experience at least a little of it. 



What are the structural or protoplasmic differences in these 

 plants which account for this extraordinary behavior when ex- 

 posed to cold ? Records such as that by Mr. Mead are of the 

 very greatest value to cultivators. We are only just begin- 

 ning to get away from the notion that all plants from tropi- 

 cal countries must be grown in a hot-house. 



Blue-flowered Cattleva. — The nearest approach to a 

 blue Catfleya is a variety of C. Laivrenciana called Vinckii, 



where they are kept saturated at all times save when the 

 leaves are falling. It grows all through the winter, the flow- 

 ers pushing immediately after the leaves have fallen. 



Disa racemosa. — This new and beautiful cool-house 

 Orchid is again flowering freely at Kew. It grows and in- 

 creases by means of stolons rapidly. The leaves are tufted, 

 as in D. grandiflora, and the scapes are from a foot to 

 eighteen inches high, with large, rosy red flowers. I de- 

 scribed this plant last year, and refer to it again now so that 

 Orchid-growers may not overlook it. In my opinion it is 

 almost, if not quite, as good a garden plant as D. grandi- 

 flora. 



Echium callithyrsum.— A tree-like example of this gigan- 

 tic Bugloss is now the most attractive plant in the Winter 

 Garden at Kew. It is twelve feet high and as much through, 

 and almost every one of the hundred or so branches is termi- 

 nated by an erect spike or thyrsus of deep blue flowers, the 

 flower-bearing portion of the strongest spike measuring a 

 foot in length and as much in circumference. This specimen 



