40 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 205. 



hand, there are numerous instances in which it does not occur, 

 as, for instance, in Peach, Apple, Pear and many otlier fruit- 

 trees, and in many ornamental trees. In fact, it is no more 

 common, in the plants which have fallen under my observa- 

 tion, than is the pernicious suckering of plants grown from 

 cutting's, as in the Lilacs, cutdng-grown or sucker-grown 

 Plums and many other plants, in which suckers must be as- 

 siduously kept down or they will choke the main stem which 

 we are endeavoring to rear. These remarks apply with equal 

 force to every citation which I have ever seen of the ill effects 

 of grafting. The cases simply show that the operation has 

 been a failure or is open to objections in the particular in- 

 stances cited, and afford no proof that there may not be other 

 plants upon which grafting is an entire success. For myself, 

 I am convinced that grafting has been too indiscriminately 

 employed, and it is apparent to every one that there have been 

 many failures in the practice. But this does not prove graft- 

 ing wrong any more than malpractice of physicians proves 

 that the science of medicine is pernicious. If there are plants 

 upon which grafting is entirely successful, then all must agree 

 that the operation itself is not wrong, per se, however many 

 cases there may be to which it is not adapted. 



2. The proposition that grafting is unnatural, and therefore 

 pernicious, is a fallacy. In the first place, there is nothing to 

 show that it is any more unnatural than the making of cut- 

 tings, and if naturalness is proved by frequency of occurrence 

 in nature, then graftage must be considered the more natural 

 process of the two, as I have already shown. One of the most 

 determined writers upon this subject has said that " it is quite 

 fair to say that raising a tree from seed, or a shrub by pulling 

 it in pieces (cuttings), is a more natural mode of increase than 

 by grafting." I cannot understand by what token the author 

 is to prove that pulling a plant in pieces is more natural than 

 grafting ; and there has been no attempt, so far as I know, to 

 show that it is so. 



But the whole discussion of the mere naturalness of any 

 operation is really aside from the question, for every operation 

 in the garden is in some sense unnatural, whether it be trans- 

 plantation, pruning or tillage ; and it is well known that these 

 very unnatural processes may sometimes increase the lon- 

 gevity and virility of the plant. Plants which receive an abun- 

 dance of food and are protected from insects and fungi and the 

 struggle with other plants are better equipped than those left 

 entirely to nature. It is the commonest notion that cultivation 

 is essentially an artificial stimulus ; that it excites the plant to 

 performances really beyond its own power, and therefore de- 

 vitalizes it. But this is a fallacy. All plants and animals in a 

 state of nature possess more power than they are able to e.x- 

 press, and they are held in a state of equilibrium, as Mr. Spencer 

 puts it, by the adaptations of environment. Once the pressure 

 of existing environments is removed, the plant springs into the 

 breach and takes on some new feature of size, robustness or 

 prolificacy, or distributes itself in new directions. The whole 

 series of benefits which arise from a change of seed is a fa- 

 miliar proof of this fact, so that if cultivation, domestication, 

 or, in other words, unnaturalness, may be sometimes a stimu- 

 lus, it is not necessarily so. Cultivation differs from natural 

 conditions more in degree than in kind. Or, as Darwin writes, 

 " Man may be said to have been trying an experiment on a 

 gigantic scale ; and it is an experiment which nature during 

 the long lapse of time has incessantly tried." 



Plant Notes. 



Some Recent Portraits. 



THE new volume of the Botanical Magazine, the one 

 hundred and fifth of the entire series, opens with a 

 figure (t. 7212) of the great Iris of Lord Howe's Island, 

 Moreea Robinsoniana, whose portrait has already appeared 

 in these columns, and whose flowering last summer at 

 Kew, for the first time in Europe, was one of the floral 

 events of the English capital. The other figures are de- 

 voted to Chirita depressa (t. 7213), a native of China, an 

 herbaceous plant with small bright purple flowers. This is 

 a member of the family of Gesneracese, in which are many 

 plants which have been wonderfully improved by cultiva- 

 tion, and it is not improbable that the present species may, 

 with careful attention and selection, develop into a good 

 garden-plant. Cirrhopetalum Thourasii (t. 7214), an inter- 

 esting, although not very showy-flowered Orchid, upon 

 which Lindley long ago founded the genus, and a native 



of Mauritius and the islands of the south Pacific Ocean. 

 Iris Fosteriana (t. 7215), a bulbous species, discovered in 

 1884 by Dr. Aitchison in Afghanistan, where he found it 

 growing plentifully at Badghis " in dry soil on the low hills 

 at an elevation of three thousand feet above the sea-level." 

 From a horticultural point of view this plant differs from all 

 its allies in the variety of the colors of the different parts 

 of the flovi'er, the outer segments being bright j'-ellow, with 

 a spreading blade streaked with black, while the inner seg- 

 ments are bright lilac. The figure is from a plant which 

 flowered in Professor Foster's garden at Cambridge, for 

 whom Mr. Baker has named the species. Primula Poissoni 

 (t. 7216); this is one of the new Chinese plants discovered 

 by the Abbe Delevay, and raised in the Paris garden from 

 seeds sent home by him. Like Primula Japonica and 

 Primula imperialis, it produces superposed whorls of flow- 

 ers ; these are bright rosy lilac, and are produced in great 

 profusion, the Kew plant from which the figure is made 

 having produced eight scapes of flowers and flowered itself 

 to deatli. The facility with which Primroses can be im- 

 proved by cultivation is shown by the fact that the native 

 specimens of this species are very small, with leaves only 

 two or three inches long and a solitary slender scape with 

 only a few flowers in a whorl, whereas on the cultivated 

 plant the flower-stock was fully two feet high and as thick 

 as a goose-quill. 



Foreign Correspondence. 



New Garden Plants of 1891. — II. 



Stove and Greenhouse Plants. — Exclusive of Orchids, 

 the best new stove and greenhouse plants introduced into 

 cultivation last year must be credited to Kew. Few trade 

 collectors think it worth while to pay any attention to foli- 

 age or flowering plants other than Orchids, for the reason 

 that, as a rule, there is not much money in them. The 

 botanical gardens in the colonies and numerous corre- 

 spondents in various parts of the world, however, send to 

 Kew various interesting and good decorative plants, and 

 these are eventually distributed among nurserymen and 

 others who desire to try them. Of the fifty or so new 

 stove and greenhouse plants recorded the following are of 

 most promise horticulturally : 



Alberta magna. — Mr. W. Bull offered this plant in his 

 catalogue of new plants for last year. It has been in cul- 

 tivation several years at Kew, but, so far as I know, it has 

 never yet flowered in England. It is rubiaceous, closely 

 allied to Cinchona, which it resembles in habit and foli- 

 age ; the flowers, which are small, are in dense panicles, 

 and colored bright red. It will most likely prove a good 

 greenhouse-plant, as it comes from a high altitude in Natal. 

 The treatment which suits Luculia ought to answer for the 

 Alberta. 



Allamanda Willl\msii, Hort. — Probably only one of the 

 many forms of the variable A. cathartica, but differing from 

 those previously known in gardens by its shrubby habit and 

 floriferousness. It has been brought into notice by B. S. 

 Williams & Son. 



Aristolochlv gigas, var. Sturtevantii, Watson. — This 

 came to Kew from Mr. Sturtevant. It flowered freely in 

 one of the tropical houses, and, so far at any rate as 

 Europe is concerned, it was the most remarkable new 

 plant of the year. It is named in compliment to I\Ir. E. D. 

 Sturtevant, for reasons stated in Garden and Forest, vol. 

 iv., p. 546. 



Brownea Crawfordii, Watson. — This is a hybrid between 

 B. grandiceps and B. macr()ph)'lla, which flowered at Kew 

 last year, and was named in compliment to the late W. H. 

 Crawford, of Cork, who raised it. In the size of the inflor- 

 escence and color of the flowers it is even superior to B. 

 grandiceps. 



Bauhinlv Galpini, N. E. Br. — This is a most promising 

 flowering-shrub for the warm greenhouse, which has been 

 introduced to Kew from the Transvaal. It has two-lobed 



