May 28, 1890.] 



Garden and Forest. 



261 



Fig. 39.— Outline Plans of Four Small Places.— See page 259. 



and three inches across. The young- leaves are subtended 

 by large crimson bracts, and the effect of the whole is a 

 rich glow. The plant is six feet high and nearly the same 

 through, and it bears about fifty heads of bloom. It is the 

 finest of all the hybrids hitherto raised from the Himalayan 

 Rhododendrons. 



R. Auckland^ is also now finely in flower in the Winter 

 Garden. There are few more noble greenhouse plants than 

 this. It requires plenty of space, never flowering until it is 

 eight or ten feet high, and it ought to be planted out. The 

 flowers are in loose, erect heads, and each flower is at least 

 six inches in diameter, saucer-shaped, and pure snow white. 

 This species is as grand among Rhododendrons as Magnolia 

 grandifolia is among its kind. 



Pteris ensiformis, var. Victoria.— This is one of Mr. 

 Bull's new introductions from the East Indies, and it is so dis- 

 tinct in character, so graceful in habit and pretty in variegation 



that it is certain to become universally popular as a decorative 

 Fern. It belongs to the same group as the well known P. 

 cretica and P. serrnlata, but is distinguished by the tallness 

 and erect habit of its fertile fronds, the pinnae of which are 

 very narrow. The barren fronds form a compact rosette and 

 are broad in the pinna;. The whole plant is green, conspicu- 

 ously mottled and margined with white. Mr. Bull will, I be- 

 lieve, include this Fern in his list of new plants for sale this 

 year. 



Streptocarpus Dunnii. — Of the many extraordinary plants 

 introduced into cultivation from South Africa this is one of the 

 most remarkable. Its solitary leaf sprawls along the ground 

 like a huge Rhubarb leaf minus the stalk, whilst "from its base 

 spring crowded racemes of tubular brick-red flowers, the 

 largest racemes containing as many as a hundred flowers. In 

 the house devoted to succulent plants at Kew there is a row 

 of plants of this Streptocarpus, numbering about fifty, and 



