304 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 388. 



choice plants, which he removes, root and branch, in large 

 numbers. Sometimes the roots are removed to supply the 

 eastern market. By these methods the choicer plants are 

 driven farther and farther over the hills or back into remote 

 svifamps and small patches of forest. 



A botanic garden of some extent is now becoming almost 

 a necessity for supplying students of school or college 

 with suitable materials for illustration and study. At this col- 

 lege, where the academic year includes the summer months, 

 a garden is especially valuable. Here each student may 

 find suitable plants for the study of fertilization by insects ; 

 or a comparison of the tendrils, the runners, root-stocks, a 

 study of various twining plants, or almost anything needed 

 for a thesis in botany, or for making notes to present to 

 the botany club or natural-history society. Every little 

 while the amateur or the professional florist has his atten- 

 tion called to the peculiar value of some aquatic, climber, 

 shrub, or what he supposed was nothing but a weed. He 

 adds it to his garden. These benefits of a botanic garden 

 are not yet fully appreciated, though ours is a favorite place 

 for young students from neighboring schools. Until seen 

 in their prime, no one can imagine the different shades of 

 color, the various forms in general outline and in detail, 

 and the endless number of positions assumed by stem, 

 leaf, inflorescence, bud and flower. 



No one learns so much from the garden as the person 

 who selects, arranges and cares for the plants. He is both 

 student and experimenter, and the more he learns the better 

 it will be for his pupils. At one time he is nearly outwitted 

 by the moles that undermine his favorites of the dry, sandy 

 knoll ; at another it is the plant-lice on the wild Asters or 

 Water-lilies, the blister-beetles coming in great swarms to 

 strip the Lupines, Coffee-trees or Baptisias, or, again, it is 

 the muskrats which devour the root-stocks of the aquatics, 

 or the striped squirrels which feast on the Putty-root. He 

 finds that June freshets decimate some plants not accus- 

 tomed to long inundations in time of growth. Among such 

 are Spikenard, Ginseng, Adder's-tongue, Burdock, Dande- 

 lion, Catnip, Motherwort, Wild Lettuce, Mayweed, Mallow, 

 Plantain and many more. 



Some fifteen years ago plants of Marsilia quadrifolia 

 were introduced into one of the ponds, and soon spread all 

 around it and sent forth long stems into the water where it 

 was two feet deep or more. For some feet near the shore 

 the surface of the water was covered with these beautiful 

 leaves. Then water-snails, finding plenty of suitable food, 

 multiplied, and the Marsilia retreated to the shore in a few 

 spots in the grass, awaiting better times. We still grow it 

 well in the mud a few inches above the water. Last win- 

 ter the thick ice during a long cold, two months or more, 

 killed the snails as well as the fish, and this summer the 

 Marsilia has again invaded the water. Wild Rice in like 

 manner was kept in check by the snails, but this year it 

 grows in water two feet or more in depth. 



Agricultur.il College, Michigan. rf- J- Beat. 



Foreign Correspondence. 



London Letter. 



/EscHYNANTHUs HiLDEBRANDii.^This is a charmiug little 

 plant, a veritable alpine, with all the attributes of the pigmy 

 beauties of the rock-garden, such as Gentian and Andro- 

 sace. It is quite happy when grown in a cold greenhouse, 

 forming compact tufts of stems three inches high, clothed 

 with green ovate fleshy leaves an inch long and a terminal 

 cluster of four or more bright scarlet and crimson flowers, 

 each an inch long, with the upper segments united and 

 forming a hood, the one lower segment being turned down 

 and suggesting a well-protruded tongue. The figure in the 

 Botanical Magazine (t. 7365) does the plant scant justice, but 

 it was prepared from a specimen which flowered in a stove. 

 Mr. Hildebrand, of the Shan States, Burma, after whom 

 this species was named, and who sent seeds and plants of 

 it to Kevi' last year, says that on the high hills in Burma it 



forms dense tufts on the trunks of trees in very moist situa- 

 tions, and when in flower it looks like a cushion of scarlet 

 velvet. It is certain to find general favor. 



Crinum augustum. — The finest specimen I have ever seen 

 of this grand Crinum is the result of novel treatment, for a 

 Crinum at any rate. Three months ago Messrs. F. Sander 

 & Co. presented to Kew a bulb of an unnamed Crinum of 

 extraordmary size, being nearly two feet long and eight 

 inches in diameter. It was planted in a tvi^elve-inch pot 

 and half-submerged in the water of the tank in which the 

 tropical Water-lilies are grown. Here it started into vig- 

 orous growth, and it now has about a dozen leaves, some 

 of them being three feet long by six incheS';.in width; it 

 also bears a stout scape three feet long, with an umbel of 

 forty flowers and buds ; each flower is eight inches 

 across from tip to tip of the elegantly recurved segments, 

 the color is rich crimson outside, paler inside, and the odor 

 is powerful and delicious. A second scape, quite as strong 

 as the first, is rapidly pushing. We have no more attrac- 

 tive plant among the many specimens cultivated. 



Hedychiuivi angustifolium X Gardnerianum. — -The Hedy- 

 chiums are happiest when grown in very large pots of rich 

 soil and partially submerged in the water of a warm tank 

 in an unshaded house. At I\ew this treatment is followed 

 for a selection of the best of the species and several hybrids 

 raised about ten years ago in the Edinburgh Botanic Gar- 

 dens. The finest of the latter is that named above. It has 

 erect stout stems five feet long, clothed with dark green 

 leaves a foot long and terminated by an erect spike, nine 

 inches long and four inches through, of rich red, almost 

 crimson flowers. Another handsome hybrid is a cross be- 

 tween H. Gardnerianum and H. coronarium, which has all 

 the fragrance and delicacy of flower of the latter, with the 

 shorter, sturdier stems and free-flowering nature of the for- 

 mer parent. Growers of tropical aquatic plants will find 

 these Hedychiums excellent companions to Nymphteas, 

 Nelumbiums, Papyrus, etc. 



Begonia carminata.— The shrubby evergreen species of 

 Begonia are now receiving attention from hybridists, and 

 we have already some very beautiful hybrids, namely, 

 President Carnot, Paul Bruant, Diadem, etc. Messrs. J. 

 V^eitch & Sons have added another by crossing the elegant, 

 richly colored B. coccinea (corallina) with B. Dregie, an 

 African species, with deciduous stems and a fleshy potato- 

 like tuber. The hybrid has a good deal of the habit of 

 B. coccinea, the branches being semi-drooping and the 

 leaves wavy and lobed. The flowers are borne in large 

 drooping, branched umbels, and they are colored rose-car- 

 mine. Although the plants shown were small, they were 

 well flowered, a character inherited from B. Dregie. 



Primula imperialis is at its best now in a cold green- 

 house at Ivew. The leaves are a foot long and three inches 

 wide, the flower-spikes three feet high, each with five or 

 six crowded whorls of deep yellow flowers. We find that 

 this species is practically biennial ; at any rate, we have 

 not been successful in keeping any of the plants after they 

 have flowered, and they flower in about two years from 

 seeds. They ripen seeds freely under cultivation. Although 

 coming from such a high altitude on the Java mountain, 

 where severe frost is experienced, this Primula will not live 

 out-of-doors through the winter at Kew. The best position 

 for it is in a house where Masdevallias thrive, or it maybe 

 grown along with the greenhouse Cinerarias. We have 

 seeds ripening on a plant of P. Japonica, fertilized with 

 pollen from P. imperialis, an interesting cross. 



Hemerocallis aurantiaca is the name of a distinct-look- 

 ing, handsome Day Lily which was awarded a first-class 

 certificate this week by the Royal Horticultural Society. It 

 was shown by Messrs. Wallace, of Colchester, who ob- 

 tained it from Japan, where it is said to have been found 

 wild among Iris Kcempferi. In stature and general charac- 

 ters it resembles H. fulva, but the flowers are six inches in 

 diameter and of a uniform deep yellow color. Mr. Wallace 

 thinks it may be a variety of H. fulva (disticha), but Mr. 

 Baker considers it a fine form of H. Dumortieri. Whatever 



