i6o 



Garden and Forest. 



[April 3, 1889. 



for the walls, Longmeadow sandstone for the trimmings, 

 and slate for the roof. The treatment is as simple 

 yet artistic, inside and outside the building, as we 

 found it at Auburndale, but the waiting-rooms are 

 wainscotted in wood instead of brick. In this case 

 the conformation of the ground made it better to 

 carry the pathway close to the walls rather than allow a 

 space for planting between. Otherwise the path would 

 have had to ascend the slope and descend it again at an 

 inconveniently steep angle. But this conformation of the 

 ground hides the path from many points of view and 

 allows the walls to look as though they sprang directly 

 from the plantations — an effect that will be increased at 

 the spot shown in the picture by additional shrubberies 

 which are to be set out this spring. 



The business standpoint is not the highest from which 

 to advocate the furtherance and development of good art. 

 Yet it is a standpoint which few persons can wholly ig- 

 nore, and least of all a railroad company, the directors of 

 which are the custodians of its stockholders' interests. It 

 is worth while, therefore, to ask. Could there be a better 

 advertisement for a suburban neighborhood than a station 

 and grounds like these.? They imply refinement, good 

 taste and a regard for the amenities of life in the local 

 community. They predict that the company which has 

 provided them will care for its patrons' comfort in other 

 directions too. And they promise that those moments of 

 detention which are a daily factor in the business man's 

 existence will not mean that purgatory of impatience, dis- 

 gust, and even physical distress which in most places they 

 have meant for so many years to thousands of long-suffer- 

 ing Americans. It is not too much to say that these sta- 

 tions of the Boston and Albany Railroad, taking buildings 

 and grounds together, are the best of their class in the 

 world ; and the company which was wise enough to build 

 them has found them a good business investment. 



New or Little Known Plants. 

 Calochortus Obispoensis.* 



THE Mariposaes, or "butterflies," of California well 

 merit this name given to them by the Spanish set- 

 tlers. Scattered here and there over the hillsides, with 

 their wing-like petals of very diverse hues and patterns 

 broadly expanded, they appear in truth like so many but- 

 terflies hovering in the sunlight over the low weeds and 

 bushes among which they grow. One of the most bizarre 

 of the many species and varieties is the Calochortus Obis- 

 pcensis, which was discovered by Mr. J. G. Lemmon, the 

 well-known adventurous and successful collector of Cali- 

 fornia, in 1886, on dry, stony hills eastward of San Luis 

 Obispo. Its general habit and character are shown by our 

 illustration, page 161 — the deep-seated, fibrous-coated bulb, 

 which is very dark-colored; the sparingly branched stem a 

 foot or two high, as usual in the genus, with narrow convo- 

 lute leaves and conspicuous flower. Of their coloring, 

 however, no idea can be given in the figure. The sepals 

 themselves are unusually strongly colored on the inner 

 surface with orange and purplish brown upon a greenish- 

 yellow ground. The petals are remarkable in not having 

 the ordinary broad, fan-like form, but are shorter than the 

 sepals and not much dilated, terminating quite abruptly 

 and often cleft at the summit. The ground color is lemon- 

 yellow, deepening to orange toward the base, and becom- 

 . ing brownish-red at the apex, the effect of which is height- 

 ened by a dense covering of long delicate hairs of the same 

 or somewhat darker hues. Near the base is the usual 

 roundish pit or nectary, which is margined by a dense 

 fringe of long orange-colored hairs converging together 

 over it. The erect filaments and anthers are of different 

 shades of orange, the upper part of the filament being often 

 tinged with purple. The whole combination is very pecu- 

 liar and striking. S. W. 



* Calochortus OBispcENSis, Lemmon. Bot. Gazette, xi., 180. 



Foreign Correspondence. 



London Letter. 



T AST summer in England was a bad one for most plants. 

 -L-' Oiu- indoor collection of Nj'mphaeas made few new tubers 

 through lack of proper summer weather, and these few are small. 

 We keep them moist all winter, as we keep Caladiums, Arisae- 

 mas, and indeed all deciduous or tuberous Aroids. They 

 winter better when kept moist. Thousands of such plants 

 as Caladiums are annually sacrificed to dry treatment. The 

 tuberous Begonias keep best in dry sand or cocoa-nut fibre. 

 To know what requires a dry rest and what must have moist- 

 ure at all times is of great importance. For instance, one tinds 

 the greatest difficulty in making young men understand that 

 whilst Hippeastrums and some Crinums must be kept abso- 

 lutely dry all winter, Vallotas, Nerines, Brunsvigias and 

 other Crinums must be kept moist. The watering-pot is the 

 greatest friend the bulb-dealer has. 



Poppies are now great favorites as garden flowers, but it is 

 not many years since all such plants were rooted up from the 

 garden as noxious weeds. A few here and there, and these 

 invariably the exotic species, might be seen, but they were not 

 popular. In the fields in autumn the great blaze of scarlet 

 Poppy is a picture scarcely to be excelled anywhere. Some 

 great traveler, Wallace I believe it was, has stated that not in 

 any part of the tropical world had he ever beheld anything half 

 so glorious as an English field of scarlet Poppy or a wood car- 

 peted with Blue-bells. We have taken a leaf out of the book 

 of the Chinese and Japanese gardener so far as regards our 

 native Poppy {P. Rhceas) and we have as the result of a very 

 few years' cultivation and selection amost beautiful strain of 

 what in itself is a grand Poppy. By " we " I mean the secretary 

 of the Royal Horticultural Society, the Rev. W. Wilks, whose 

 Shirley Poppies are now in great demand, on account of their 

 clear and rich tints. Nine years ago Mr. Wilks noticed in his 

 garden a common field Poppy with a white-edged flower. 

 From seeds saved from this plant he obtained varieties with 

 more white in the flower, and others of a uniform pale color. 

 By careful selection he succeeded in fixing the most distinct 

 and attractive shades, and the Shirley Poppies are now avail- 

 able for every garden. The colors range from pure white 

 through pink to glowing scarlet, minus the blotch of black at 

 the bottom of the petals, a conspicuous character in the type. 

 Some are red with white edges, others white with red edges. 

 Singularly enough I brought seeds from South Africa two 

 years ago which were said to be gathered from wild plants, 

 and these produced flowers of P. Rhceas with bilobed petals, 

 which were white with red edges. It is surprising that a plant 

 vi^hich appears to have been unaltered in a wild state, during 

 thousands of years, should have broken away from its color 

 characters so readily under good cultivation and selection as 

 has P. Rhceas in the hands of Mr. Wilks. 



Hippeastrums are fast developing their flowers, about a 

 week's clear weather being all that is needed to bring the ma- 

 jority of the kinds into full blow. Messrs. Veitch and Mr. B. S. 

 Williams are the most famous workers at the improvement of 

 these plants as garden flowers. Dean Herbert, greatest of 

 bulb-mongers, raised many hybrids and seedlings, and Mr. 

 James Douglas has been veiy successful in obtaining improved 

 forms. The prices paid for good kinds of Hippeastrum are 

 almost as high as the best Orchids fetch. Veitch and De Graaf, 

 of Leiden, have been most successful in breeding large- 

 flowered, clear-colored, well-shaped varieties, whilst Williams 

 has paid more attention to form and color with medium size. 

 Some of the latter are charming plants, without any coarseness, 

 and perfect in color. I note one, a new seedling, named J. R. 

 Pitcher, raised from a deep red-flowered kind, crossed with 

 Mrs. Lee. The flower is medium in size, a perfect trumpet in 

 shape, and the color deep crimson, with darker veins, the 

 throat being almost maroon. Hippeastrums have become 

 very popular here. The only defect in these highly-bred kinds 

 is in their supposed weak constitutions ; although the raisers 

 have no difficulty in keeping the best of their producfions from 

 year to year. Coburgias are also in bloom now. These and 

 the Stenomessons are of the choicest and most interesting of 

 garden Amaryllids, but they are rarely met with. They are all 

 Andean, and require the same treatment as the Hippeastrums, 

 which they resemble in leaf and scape, but the flowers are long, 

 tubular, drooping, with the limb about one and a half inches 

 across. C. liiteo-viridis, with flowers lemon-yellow shot with 

 green, and C. incarnata, with rosy red, green-tipped flowers, 

 are both in flower at Kew. 



Growers of fruit trees, such as Apples and Pears, are paying 

 particular attenfion to the selecfion of the most suitable_ stock 

 for grafting the different kinds upon. Valuable statistics on 



