174 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 375. 



July, and turned over and well mixed al>oiit three months 

 later, taking care at all times to prevent the heap from get- 

 ting too vi'et. Just before potting, nearly a third in bulk of 

 sharp sand is added. Potting begins in mid-January, and 

 the bulbs flower eight or ten weeks later. After potting, 

 the pots are plunged ; spent tan (stored for a year) from 

 the tan-yards is the material used both at Chelsea and at 

 Kew. No bottom-heat is applied at tirst, and if the soil is 

 damp when used no water is given. For three or four 

 weeks the temperature of the house is kept at fifty-five 

 degrees, Fahrenheit ; then a little bottom-heat is given, and 

 the temperature is raised to sixty degrees. When in flower 

 the plants may be moved into a cool house, but very little 

 water will be needed unless the leaves are well developed. 

 More failures result from overwatering than from all other 

 causes combined. After flowering, the pot and half the 

 upper exposed part of the bulb should be plunged again in 

 tan and kept shaded during bright sunshine. A good 

 syringing daily is advisable during bright weather. Bot- 

 tom-heat, too, is beneficial. Growth is rapid, and the roots 

 run through and over the pots for some feet into the 

 plunging material. As soon as the foliage has attained full 

 size the bottom-heat can be done away .with ; no shading 

 is necessary, and gradually all light and air possible is 

 allowed, and fiiually the pots are lifted out of the tan and 

 allowed to stand without water on the beds until the pot- 

 ting season again arrives, when the old soil is shaken 

 away and the dead roots removed. In good strong bulbs 

 there will always be a number of thick, fleshy, healthy, 

 living roots at potting-time, even after a drying of some 

 months. 



Seedlings. — At Kew we flower numbers of these in less 

 than two years from sowing the seed. As soon as ripe, 

 say, in iVIay, we sow the seeds in pans in a warm house. 

 When large enough to handle, the young plants are pricked 

 off into beds not too far from the glass, and are kept grow- 

 ing continuously until October of the following year. 

 They are then ripened off and potted in January or 

 February. We sow seeds every year, only allowing 

 those plants to seed which possess the color, form or 

 some other quality desired. By starting with a few good 

 parents a fine series of beautiful seedlings is soon procured. 

 Messrs. Veitch never use manure-water at all, and repot 

 every year. Others are equally successful by treatment 

 widely different — that is, by never shaking out the bulbs 

 at all, but repotting in slightly larger pots until the limit is 

 reached, and using manure-water carefully during season 

 of growth. A little crushed bone mixed with the soil is 

 beneficial. The way we manage the bottom-heat at Kew 

 is to have hot-water pipes — provided with valves, so as 

 to regulate heat or stop it altogether — underneath the plung- 

 ing-beds. The side walls which support the slabs on which 

 the plunging material is placed prevent the heat from 

 escaping laterally to any extent. By following such a 

 course of treatment failure is practically impossible, but I 

 am sure that in many parts of the United States really good 

 results could be obtained by growing in cold frames. It is 

 distinctly desirable to keep up a succession of seedlings, as 

 plants propagated only from offsets have not the vigor of 

 seedlings. Given good varieties to begin with, and cross- 

 fertilization practiced only with vigorous bright colored 

 or well-formed flowers, and all the resulting seedlings are 



well worth growing-. „ ,t- , , 



Kew. George Nicholson. 



New or Little-known Plants. 



Rose, Belle Siebrecht. 



AN illustration of this Rose, which is being distributed 

 this year for the first time by Messrs. Siebrecht & 

 Wadley, of this city, will be found on page 1 75 of this issue. 

 The plant has already proved valuable when grown under 

 glass. Its habit of constant bloom and the color of its flow- 

 ers, which is a solid deep shade of pink, quite novel in Roses 

 of this class, make it very useful for commercial florists. It is 



a vigorous grower and an abundant producer of good-sized 

 flowers ; the buds tapering and borne on long stout stems 

 well furnished with vigorous leaves. Another strong point 

 in its favor is the singular purity and richness of its color 

 as seen under artificial light, and it really shows up more 

 brilliantly under these conditions than any of the Roses 

 now grown for commercial purposes. We are assured that 

 the plants have proved perfectly hardy in the latitude of 

 New York for several years, and if it has a constitution to 

 endure our winters it will be a most welcome addition to 

 our hardy garden Roses, since we have so few which flower 

 the season through. 



The plant is said to have originated with Messrs. Dickson 

 & Sons, of Newtownards, Ireland, and, under the name of 

 Mrs. W. J. Grant, it received the gold medal of the National 

 Rose Society at the Chester show in 1892. It is said to 

 be a cross between La France, which came from the 

 seed of a Tea Rose, and Lady Mary Fitzwilliam, which 

 is also a Hybrid Tea. This parentage will account for its 

 ever-blooming qualities and its delightful fragrance. 



Plant Notes. 



LiNDERA Benzoin. — This hardy native Benzoin, Spice- 

 wood or Spice-bush, sometimes called Fever-bush or Ben- 

 jamin-bush, may be considered as familiar to comparatively 

 few people, either as a garden-plant or in its native habitat 

 in our woods, where it delights in moist rich soils or along 

 the courses of streams and rivulets. Under good condi- 

 tions it becomes a tall shrub six or eight to twelve or fifteen 

 feet high, and it is among the earliest, although it is not the 

 very earliest, of our indigenous species to blossom. In 

 flower it always attracts attention by its short axillary, 

 umbel-like clusters of small honey-yellow colored blossoms, 

 which appear thickly along the naked branches long before 

 there are any leaves visible. The Spice-bush is dioecious, 

 bearing its staminate or pollen flowers and its pistillate or 

 fruit-producing flowers on separate plants, and the usually 

 more numerous blossoms and the yellow anthers of the 

 male or staminate plants give them a generally brighter 

 aspect. The oval, smooth, shining bright red fruit, which 

 matures in the autumn, is more conspicuous than the flow- 

 ers, and remains on the plant until after the leaves fall, if 

 it is not previously eaten by birds, some kinds of which 

 seem very fond of it. In planting the Spice-bush for the 

 autumnal fruitage a majority of the plants selected should 

 be pistillate, but a few staminate plants should be placed • 

 among them, so as to insure fertilization. If, on the other 

 hand, it is desired to get the best effect from the not very 

 conspicuous early spring flowers the staminate plants 

 would prove somewhat the most attractive. In a natural 

 condition in shady places the plants commonly have a 

 thin and straggling appearance, but growing in good gar- 

 den-soil or by judicious pruning they form neat compact 

 bushes. Although in nature the Spice-bush is generally 

 found in moist situations, its free growth in ordinary shrub- 

 bery plantations or in garden cultivation shows that un- 

 usual moisture is not essential to its vigorous development. 

 The leaves change to a pretty soft yellow color before they 

 fall. All parts of the Spice-bush are richly spicy, aromatic, 

 but this quality is strongest in the bark and fruit. In some 

 parts of the country the people use an infusion or decoction 

 of the twigs or bark as a drink in fevers or as a vermifuge, 

 and the dried and powdered fruits were sometimes used as 

 a substitute for allspice during the Revolutionary War. 

 The benzoin of commerce is derived from an entirely dif- 

 ferent East Indian plant, or plants, belonging to another 

 family. The drug was early known as "Incense of Java," 

 or by the Arab name, "Luban Jawi." B)' leaving off the 

 two first letters of the first word it is said the name gradu- 

 ally became corrupted and changed until it got to Benja- 

 min, the product being sometimes known as Gum Benjamin, 

 and our Lindera getting its occasional name of Benjamin- 

 bush from some similarity in odor to the product from the 

 oriental tree. 



