October 23, 1S89.] 



Garden and Forest. 



509 



137. — Spiraea Millefolium. — See page 



ripens seeds freely under the sunny Italian sky ; the Turin 

 plant was a fine, handsome bush some nine feet high. This, 

 as well as the Japanese Stachyuriis prcecox, which flowers and 

 fruits freely in company with the above-mentioned trees, only 

 succeeds under exceptionally favorable conditions in England. 

 Another member of the Walnut family, Pterocarya Caiicasica, 

 sixty feet high, with a trunk three feet in diameter, was laden 



witiii its long- pendulous spikes 

 of small winged nuts. A big 

 Maidenhair tree {Ginkgo bilo- 

 ba), seventy feet high, and an 

 Idesia polycarpa, thirty feet 

 high, were among the finest of 

 the Japanese trees. The Hima- 

 layan Spruce {Picea Mori7ida) 

 was represented by a small 

 group of fine pyramidal speci- 

 mens from fifty to sixty feet 

 high. Sterctilia platanifolia, a 

 species which grows so rapidly 

 and produces such a fine effect 

 in northern France, is here a 

 round-headed pollard, the long, 

 thick shoots being killed back 

 more or less every winter. 



Amongst other features of 

 special interest noted in the 

 open air were a Jujube {Zizy- 

 phiis jujuba), laden with fruit, 

 and close to it a fine Aristo- 

 lochia ornitJiocephala, flowering 

 abundanth'. The latter, how- 

 ever, will be housed before 

 winter sets in. A nice lot of ter- 

 restrial Orchids (European 

 species) were growing in pots, 

 not plunged, but merely stand- 

 ing on gravel in partial shade. 

 A dense covering of the com- 

 monly cultivated Selaginella 

 Kj-aiissiana made an excellent 

 substitute for the grasses, etc., 

 amongst which they grow in a 

 wild state. This plan is well 

 worthy of a trial, as very few 

 orchid growers, professional or 

 amateur, succeed with many 

 of these peculiarly interesting 

 plants, numbers of which are 

 as beautiful in the color of their 

 Howers as these are quaint and 

 strange in form. In England 

 we do not, as a rule, get suf- 

 ficient sunshine for the Wild 

 Potato- vine or Man-of-the- 

 Earth {Jpomwa pandicrata). In 

 TiuMn, however, it was a splen- 

 did object, clothing a stump fif- 

 teen feet high, and literally 

 covering it with large, beauti- 

 ful, white, purple-throated flow- 

 ers. /. Qiiavioclit, too, gener- 

 ally grown as a warm green- 

 house plant with us, was a fine 

 sight in the open, close to the 

 species just named, the finely 

 cut, slender leaves and pro- 

 fusion of bright scarlet fiowers 

 affording a combination as 

 charming as it was novel to us. 

 As far as' in-door cultivation 

 is concerned English gardeners 

 have not much to learn from 

 Italian practice. Tlie houses 

 were heated by steam, but the 

 plants, exceptingsomein a large 

 conser\-atory,call for no remark. 

 The climbers in the last-named 

 structure were exceedingly tine, 

 and the large, twisted stems of 

 the Bignonias helped one to re- 

 alize travelers' de.'icriptions of 

 the vines in a tropical forest. 

 Bignonia Cherere covers a large 

 space of back wall, and hangs 

 in festoons from the roof. Onlv a few of the handsome flowers 

 were to be seen at the time of our visit ; but when the plant 

 is in full blossom it is, so the Curator informed us, one daz- 

 zling mass of deep red. Tecoma jasminoidcs, too, flowers 

 equally freelv and attains dimensions as large as those of the 

 plant previously mentioneil. Dioclea glycinoides, an Austra- 

 lian climber, was verv showv with its long racemes of scarlet, 



