24 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 360. 



HowARDiA Caraccasana. — The genus Hovvardia, or Pogo- 

 nopus, is nearly allied to Pinckneya pubens, the beautiful 

 Rubiaceous tree found wild in Florida and Carolina, but, 

 so far as I know, never yet successfully grown in England, 

 notwithstanding numerous earnest attempts. The How- 

 ardia under notice is not, however, so recalcitrant, for it 

 has flowered at Kew several times within the last twenty 

 years, and it is in flower now. It grows to a large size if 

 allowed to, Mr. Howard, the Cinchona expert, after whom 

 it was named by VVeddell, having grown a large hush of it 

 in his garden at Tottenham. The plant 

 in flower at Kew now is only eighteen 

 inches high ; it has opposite, stalked, light 

 green leaves and terminal loose panicles 

 of tubular pink flowers an inch long, sub- 

 tended by foliaceous bracts colored rose- 

 pink, with yellowish tips. The genus 

 Musssenda, also Rubiaceous, has the same 

 peculiar character, but in that genus all 

 the species have white bracts and com- 

 paratively small yellow flowers. The 

 Howardia is a meritorious winter-flower- 

 ing stove plant. There is a good figure 

 of it m -the Botanical Magazine, t. 5110 

 (1859), where it is described as " a very 

 lovely stove-plant with gracefully droop- 

 ing panicles of flowers, whose beauty is 

 very much increased by the remarkable 

 enlargement of one of the teeth of the 

 calyx into a heart-shaped, petiolated, deep 

 rose-colored, foliaceous lobe." It appears 

 to have been distributed by Messrs. Makoy 

 & Co., of Liege, many years ago under 

 the name of Pinckneya ionantha. 



Drac.ena Godseffiana is a stove-plant 

 of exceptionally pleasing and distinct 

 character. It is represented by hundreds 

 of plants in the St. Albans nurseries and 

 will shortly be distributed by Messrs 

 Sander & Co. as a new foliage-plant. I 

 have already called attention to it in Gar- 

 den and Forest, but it is good enough t<> 

 be mentioned again. It is a true Dractena, 

 not a Cordyline, the correct generic ap- 

 pellation of the plants known in gardens 

 as D. terminalis, D. indivisa, D. recurva, 

 etc., and most resembles the old D. sur- 

 culosa, for which it was at first mistaken. 

 Now that it is in character, however, its 

 distinctness from all other cultivated repre- 

 sentatives of this genus is very evident. 

 It has thin wiry stems, branches and ' jot. 



suckers freely, and its ovate, elegantly 

 waved leaves are colored glossy green, ' " ^ 



with numerous large spots of creamy 

 white, suggesting in variegation the 

 leaves of a good variety of Aucuba Ja- • -„ 



ponica. It is easily propagated from , 



stem-cuttings or by division, and it grows 

 freely. It is a native of Lagos, whence it 

 was introduced about three years ago. " 



Tea Cultivation. — The monopoly of the 

 tea trade by China has long since been 

 broken down, the tea ])iant being now cul- 

 tivated in India, Ceylon, Natal, Mauritius 

 and other countries with more or less success. Its cultivation 

 under glass in England even has been suggested as a profit- 

 able undertaking. Russia, hitherto China's best customer 

 for the choicest teas, has lately started tea plantations in 

 Batoum, and, according to a recent consular report to the 

 British Foreign Office, with every prospect of success. 

 Chinese tea-planters have been employed to foster the in- 

 dustry, and in less than ten years the experiment has been 

 productivej^of such satisfactory results that the Russian 

 Government has set apart 43,000 acres to be turned into 



tea plantations. The methods of tea culture in practice in 

 Ceylon, India and China are to be thoroughly studied by a 

 commission sent for the purpose to those countries. The 

 Chmese tea-plant, Thea chinensis, now called Camellia 

 theifera, is hardy against a wall at Kew and forms a dense 

 shrub six feet high in the temperate house. There is no 

 reason, therefore, why it should not be cultivated with suc- 

 cess wherever the Orange, Olive, Pomegranate, Persimmon 

 and such like plants thrive in the open air. I am not aware 

 if tea cultivation is an established industry in the southern 



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Fig. 3. — Pinus Chihuahuana. — See page 22. 



LInited States, but if it is not, the experiment is well worth 

 making. The Indian variety, T. Assamica, now called 

 Camellia theifera, var. Assamica, is not so hardy and thrives 

 best in an almost tropical climate. Tea seeds are easily 

 imported from India or Ceylon and they germinate readily. 

 The Assam variety was thus obtained by Kew and dis- 

 tributed to Mauritius, Jamaica, Natal and other colonies a 

 few years ago, the seeds afterward germinating freely. 

 Cultural directions are easily obtained, but I should say 

 that a good loamy soil, a moderate supply of water, bright, 



