lOO 



Garden and Forest. 



[February 27, 1889. 



Foreign Correspondence. 



London Letter. 



n A SCHOOL of scientific and practical horticulture " is the 

 ■^^ most important item in the programme of our Royal 

 Horticultural Society for this year. Chiswick is to be devoted 

 to experimental and test gardening, and is to be made orna- 

 mental as well as useful. If the Society can succeed in carry- 

 ing through all that is aimed at in the Chiswick gardens, 

 every one interested in horticulture will be gratified. There is 

 a strong section of the Society in favor of departing entirely 

 from Westminster to Chiswick, arguing that a horticultural 

 society should appeal for support, not through flower-shows 

 and city offices, but through solid work in the laboratory, i. e., 

 the garden. American readers will be interested to hear that 

 in future first-class certificates will not be awarded by the 

 Royal Horticultural Society to plants that are not of excep- 

 tional merit as garden-plants. A second-class cerfificate, 

 called an award of merit, will be given to plants worthy of 

 commendation. After all, the value of these certificates de- 

 pends on the discriminative knowledge of those who award 

 them, and the committees appointed being composed of lead- 

 ing horticulturists, both professional and amateur, we may 

 feel confident that none but first-class plants will win their 

 approval. It is also intended to certificate strains and not in- 

 dividual plants in such cases as seedling Begonias, Fuchsias, 

 Primulas, etc. A healthy sign is noted in the desire shown by 

 nurserymen and others to get certificates for their new plants. 

 Many of the nurserymen who used to hold aloof from the 

 Society now submit their new plants for its approval. 



At the meedng held on the 15th inst. the following plants 

 were exhibited and received first-class certificates : Vanda 

 Amesiatia, to which I have recently referred. Messrs. Low & 

 Co., who introduced it, state that their collector saw plants 

 with over 100 expanded fiowers, and one upon which no less 

 that 185 fiowers were counted. The species is very distinct, 

 and bears evidences of proving a most useful garden Orchid. 

 Primula Sinensis, Swanley Mauve, is remarkable for the 

 size and substance of its pale, mauve flowers ; some of those 

 shown measuring more than two inches across. Mr. Can- 

 nell has succeeded in obtaining a strain of Primulas remarkable 

 for vigor and size of flower. He and the Messrs. Sutton have 

 been most successful in Primula breeding. Some interesting 

 information, both historical and cultural, on P. sinensis has 

 recently been collected and published by Dr. Masters, in the 

 Gardeners' Chronicle. The power of the plant-breeder when 

 relying solely upon seminal variation is well exemplified in 

 the success with this Primrose. The prototype is a poor 

 plant, with flowers smaller than those of P. poculiformis or P. 

 obconica, and correspondingly small foliage. Mr. Cannell's 

 Swanley Mauve is only one of thousands of forms which have 

 been the outcome of cultivation and selection on the part of 

 the horticulturist. I do not think the importance of looldng 

 after seminal variation under cultivation is properly grasped 

 as yet by horticulturists generally, yet it is a fact that better 

 results are thus obtained than by hybridizing alone. 



Mr. Frank A. Morgan, whose article in the Nineteenth Cen- 

 tury on "Fruit-growing" you recently referred to, is not con- 

 sidered an authority by English professional men. Mr. Mor- 

 gan gauges the whole question by his experience in a fruit- 

 market, and quotes fancy prices paid by a few extravagant 

 cockneys as a basis upon which to argue the question of fruit- 

 growing for the whole of England. Mr. W. N. White, who 

 has had twenty years' experience in the London Fruit and 

 Vegetable Market, and is a grower as well, says : " I have, at 

 the present dme in my warehouse, apples from Herefordshire 

 which cannot be sold at a shilling per bushel ; I have also 

 apples from Berkshire and Oxfordshire which cannot be sold 

 at two shillings and sixpence per bushel, and yet a fortnight 

 ago, I sold American apples as high as eighteen shillings per 

 bushel, though I think it only fair to say that plenty of Ameri- 

 can apples are being sold at three shiUings per bushel, and 

 that during the past month of December I have received no 

 less than 16,500 barrels, representing 50,000 bushels of apples 

 from America. Some of your correspondents will say that this 

 proves their contenfion that these can be grown in England. 

 Permit me to inform them that they could not be grown in 

 England, and that the worst apple I am at present receiving 

 from America is superior to the best of any I am getting from 

 the home country." Testimony from growers of great expe- 

 rience all tends to prove that fruit-growing in England is a 

 poor panacea for agricultural distress. Mr. Morgan has 

 urged, in a leading society journal, that we have only to 

 plant the fields with fruit-trees, and engage a few laborers to 



look after them, to ensure an abundant supply of such fruit as 

 shall beat the foreign produce out of the English market ! 



Bamboos. — The two beautiful illustrations of Bamboos in 

 Ceylon, which appeared in your issue of the 9th instant, would 

 have delighted General Munro, who paid considerable atten- 

 tion to the cultivated Bamboos at Kew, where a large collec- 

 tion of both hardy and tropical species is grown. In the Palm 

 house we have a clump of B. gigantea {Dendrocalaiiius gigan- 

 teiis) and another of B. vulgaris, with canes sixty feet high and 

 five inches in diameter. In the gardens of the Duke of Nor- 

 thumberland at Sion House, situated on the Thames, just op- 

 posite Kew, is an equally large specimen of D. Brandisii. The 

 quick growth of these canes — eighteen inches in a day — is 

 most interesting ; the shedding of the beautiful sheaths from 

 the newly-developed cane, so well shown in your figure 85, 

 being suggestive of the hatching of eggs. None of these 

 giants have been known to flower here. The pretty Arundi- 

 7iaria falcata is cultivated for the decoration of rooms, some 

 of our principal plant-furnishei's growing it by the hundred 

 solely for this purpose. 



Grown in nine-inch pots the canes attain a length of six feet 

 to eight feet, branch freely towards the top, arch over in the 

 most graceful and plume-like fashion, and, being clothed with 

 soft green, lance-shaped foliage, they form most useful decor- 

 ative plants for large halls. When they get shabby all that is 

 required is liberal treatment in a hot, moist stove for a few 

 weeks, and they are as good as ever. Appai-ently the hardy 

 Bamboos are little known with you, probably because your 

 winters are too cold. Here B. Metake is a grand mass twelve 

 feet high and as much through, the foliage of the richest 

 green, and the habit as graceful as a fern. It is outside in a 

 moist, shaded corner, and receives no protection whatever. 

 B. mitis is another graceful, hardy kind ; so, too, is B. nigra, B. 

 viride-glaucescens, B. hybrida, B. Simonii, and about half a 

 score of others under garden names. These get no protection, 

 and are beautiful all through the winter. They like moisture 

 and plenty of rich manure. M. Latour Marliac, a French 

 nurseryman, has lately introduced a number of beautiful 

 kinds of reputed hardiness, some of which have variegated 

 foliage, or striped canes. The singular square-stemmed Bam- 

 boo [B. quadrangulata) is also quite hardy at Kew. 



Herbaceous P/eonies have suddenly sprung into favor here. 

 Nurserymen are collecdng and propagating them, and ama- 

 teurs are inquiring into the merits of the many kinds offered. 

 Except in the old-fashioned country gardens these plants were 

 scarcely to be met with until lately. They are big, rich in 

 colors, artistic enough to please the aesthete, and as easily kept 

 as weeds. Not a little of their beauty is in their foliage in 

 spring, which, as it pushes up, unfolds to view the richest of 

 coppery and bronze colors. I know one famous garden where 

 the proprietor prefers the foliage to the fiowers, planting his 

 Paeonies for spring effect. If we could grow the Montans no 

 doubt many would prefer them, but they thrive in compara- 

 tively few localities in England. At Kew, for instance, they 

 lose more growth in winter than they make during sum- 

 mer. W. Watson. 



Kew. 



New or Little Known Plants. 

 Japanese Chrysanthemum — Medusa. 



EVERY one who has raised many Chrysanthemums 

 from seed has occasionally found flovirers with 

 drooping florets, and such plants are rare in collections 

 chiefly because they have not been considered worth propa- 

 gating. As long ago as 1816 a Chrysanthemum, with long, 

 white, streaming florets was described in England by 

 Sabine. Delaux has sent out one or two varieties of this 

 form, although of different colors, but they did not prove 

 to be favorites with the public and they no longer appear 

 on his hsts. The plants which produce this type of flower 

 have not generally been of vigorous growth, and have not 

 proved capable of much improvement. The one illustrated 

 on page loi came to this country from Japan, where some 

 of the tasseled forms are said to be much admired in the 

 Neesima Collection, which included the Mrs. Alpheus Hardy 

 and other noteworthy varieties. It is better than any of 

 this class which we have seen — pure white in color, and, 

 as the illustration shows, not without a certain grace of 

 form. It is certainly interesting as a curiosity, and it may 

 be found of use as a parent of new forms when crossed 

 with other varieties. 



