April 20, 1892.] 



Garden and Forest. 



185 



Horticultural Society. Several' houses and frames are de- 

 voted exclusively to these plants at Chelsea, one house, 

 sixty feet long by eighteen feet wide, being entirely filled 

 with the Howering bulbs. These flowers are now rapidly 

 approaching perfection, hundreds of fat succulent scapes 

 bearing clusters of enormous trumpets of the brightest as 

 well as the most delicate hues, and forming a picture 

 which gives a horticulturist peculiar pleasure — a picture 



Fig. 28. — Pinus Jertreyi, var. peninsularis. — See page 183. 



of health, vigor and wealth of bloom ; or, in other words, 

 first-rate cultivation. Hippeastrums are among the most 

 recent of the triumphs of horticultural skill. From several 

 species with large flowers, but coarse and "unfinished" 

 from the florists standpoint, a race of plants has been 

 evolved which have all the charm that size, rich and deli- 

 cate colors and excellence of form give to flowers. The 

 worship of the big for its own sake may be vulgar, but it 



is, at any rate, general. We all get excited over big flow- 

 ers, from Rafflesia, Aristolochia and Victoria to the big 

 Chrysanthemums and Begonias. Hippeastrums are big by 

 nature, so that the breeder had only to improve them in 

 form and tone down their sometimes harsh colors to 

 ensure success. This has been accomplished, chiefly by 

 Messrs. J. Veitch & .Sons and the De Graafs of Leyden, and 

 Amaryllis is to-day, in England at any rate, one of the 

 most admired of garden-plants. 



Cytisus scoparius, var. Andreanus. — I omitted 

 this plant from those mentioned last week as 

 good for forcing. At Kew there are now in 

 flower some beautiful examples of it. They are 

 standards, having been grafted upon the ordi- 

 nary Laburnum, and each plant has a head 

 a foot through, formed of many long branches, 

 which are clothed for their whole length with 

 beautiful yellow and rich madder-brown flowers. 

 Among the many flowers at Kew at the present 

 time these plants of Andre's Broom are, I be- 

 lieve, the most admired by visitors. They are 

 grown in pot all the year, plunged in the soil 

 outside during summer, then placed in a cold 

 frame for the winter, and forced into flower in 

 March by the application of a little heat. If 

 your florists have not made the acquaintance of 

 this Broom already, permit me to strongly 

 recommend it as one likely to find universal 

 admiration. 



Amorphophallus RiviERi. — This is a small 

 edition of A. Titanum, the hugeSumatran Arum 

 flowered at Kew several years ago. The former 

 is represented by two flowering specimens in 

 an intermediate house at Kew, where it grows 

 well, although it is hardy in a sheltered border. 

 It does not often bloom in gardens, being 

 grown rather for its handsome foliage. The 

 inflorescence is' a yard high and has a stalk a 

 foot or so long, a trumpet-shaped spathe nine 

 inches across, and a very long erect club-like 

 spadix. Its color is reddish chocolate. Like 

 all Arums, it emits a very penetrating and un- 

 pleasant odor for the first day or so after flow- 

 ering. It is supposed to be a native of China, 

 though nothing definite is known on this point, 

 it having first appeared in the garden of Mon- 

 sieur Rivier, in Algeria, about twenty years ago. 

 Beaumontia grandiflora. — This plant is now 

 in flower in one of the stoves at Kew. It is a 

 splendid stove-climber, and I gave an account 

 of it in Garden and Forest two years ago, when 

 it flovi'ered magnificently in several gardens 

 near London. It has no equal among large 

 white-flowered stove-climbers ; its long trum- 

 pets of ivory-white flowers, as large as those of 

 Lilium longiflorum, being borne in great clusters 

 on the end of almost every one of its numerous 

 short lateral branches. It grows to a large size, 

 and therefore requires plenty of room, both for 

 the roots and stems. In a sunny tropical house, 

 where it can be treated liberally in summer and 

 kept dry at the root in winter, it makes a mag- 

 nificent display in March or April. It is Indian 

 and Apocynaceous. 

 '^ Chinese Rhododendrons. — Chinese plants are 



conspicuous in the conservatory at this time of. 

 year. The Moutan Pseonies (forced), the Camel- 

 lias, and various Rhododendrons, commonly known as 

 Azaleas, are the glory of the greenhouse in spring. Of 

 course, the two best known of the Chinese Rhodo- 

 dendrons are the hardy deciduous R. Sinensis (Azalea 

 mollis) and the "Indian Azaleas," which are not In- 

 dian. Beside these, however, we now know of over 

 sixty species, all natives of China, mostly in the prov- 

 ince of Yun-nan. Some of these are in cultivation. 



