March 6, 1895.] 



Garden and Forest. 



95 



wholly yellow, except at the base. The whole surface of 

 the flower shines as if it had been coated with varnish. It 

 should be planted in sphagnum and peat in a shallow teak 

 basket or raft and supended near the roof glass in a shady 

 position in the cool house. 



Hybrid Cypripediums. — A list, presumably complete up to 



Fig. 14. — Qucrcus Toumeyi, n. sp.— See page 92. 



I. A fruiting branch, natural size. 2. Cup-scales, enlarged. 3. A tiu(, natural size. 



4. A seed, natural size. 5. Lea\-es, natural size. 



may see fit to grumble at the creation of such a host of what 

 I call pedigree Orchids, and however poor we may vote 

 many of them to be as decorative plants, they continue to ex- 

 cite a considerable amount oi interest among a section, at any 

 rate, of Orchid growers, for whom Mr. Chapman's list will 

 have great value. Viewed as a record of work done by the 

 hybridist, this list in itself is astonishing, 

 while in the extreme divergence of charac- 

 ter in the parents of some of the hybrids 

 raised the systematic botanist has food for 

 reflection. 



Flower Drying. — A collection of dried flow- 

 ers of Orchids was an interesting exhibit last 

 Tuesday. They had been prepared by Mr. 

 Chapman, gardener to Mr. Measures, and 

 they comprised Cypripediums, Cattleyas, 

 Sophronitis, Laelias and similar popular 

 brightly colored Orchids. The merit of the 

 exhibit lay in the wonderful preservation of 

 the colors, which were quite as brilliant as 

 when the flowers were alive and looked, a 

 short distance off, like accurately colored 

 drawings. Mr. Chapman succeeds in pre- 

 serving the colors by putting the flowers be- 

 tween sheets of blotting paper under sufficient 

 pressure to prevent them from shriveling, and 

 then placing them in a hot oven. The flowers 

 thus treated are thoroughly dried in a few 

 hours without any loss of color. When 

 mounted on paper and exposed to light and 

 air the colors in time lose a little of their 

 brilliancy, but, flowers that had been done 

 a year had not appreciably faded. The 

 difficulty is to fix the colors so that they 

 will not fade. Mr. Chapman's method is 

 likely to be of greater value to horticulturists 

 than botanists. 



Interchange of Seeds. — The botanical gar- 

 dens of importance in Continental countries 

 and the United Kingdom annually print and 

 circulate each a catalogue of the seeds availa- 

 ble for distribution from those ripened in the 

 gardens, and also, in some cases, including 

 surplus seeds obtained from tropical coun- 

 tries. These catalogues are, as a rule, posted 

 to all botanical establishments so that selec- 

 tions can be made. In this way it is easy to 

 replace losses among plants of botanical in- 

 terest only, and especially of annuals and 

 other easily lost plants which may fail to ripen 

 in some gardens, but succeed in others. The 

 custom is an excellent one. I know that at 

 Kew it is found to be of considerable help 

 toward maintaining the collections, and also 

 that Kew contributes largely to the mainte- 

 nance of collections in other gardens, as is 

 shown by the fact that the number of packets 

 of seeds ripened at Kew and distributed last 

 year amounted to 5,200. This does not in- 

 clude the seeds received at Kew and redis- 

 tributed to the colonies, etc. Is there such 

 an interchange of seeds among the botanical 

 gardensof the United States .? ^,,. ,„ 



London. >"• yyalSOll. 



tlie time of publication, of all hybrid Cypripediums, has 

 been drawn up by Mr. H. J. Chapman, gardener to Mr. 

 R. I. Measures, of Camberwell, whose collection of Cypri- 

 pediums is the largest known. Mr. Chapman's list is pub- 

 lished in The Gardeners' Chronicle this week. It comprises 

 no less than five hundred and twenty-two hybrids. The 

 parents in each case are given, and also the raiser's name. 

 It must be acknowledged that however much some of us 



Plant Notes. 



H0U.ST0NIA ctERULEA. — This charming, although diminu- 

 tive, native plant is rarely cultivated, although not at all 

 difficult to propagate and preserve. Where it is not indige- 

 nous, it is always an attractive novelty when in flower, and 

 where it does grow wild it might profitably receive more 

 attention than it generally gets. Where the jilants grow 



