June 22, i!!92.] 



Garden and Forest. 



293 



beauty. Marie Stuart is very double, a fine satiny pink witli a 

 delightful perfume. Louis Van Houtte is purplish crimson, 

 double, and eft'ective in a mass of a dozen plants set at a dis- 

 tance of eighteen inches apart. 



This is the season of most rapid t;rowth in the vegetable 

 world, and it is a keen pleasure to note how the frequent rains 

 and warm, but not extremely hot, sunshine are bringing on 

 our favorite shrubs and trees. A young tree which has 

 been sent to me as Cedrela Sinensis, is making amazing prog- 

 ress, having shot up four feet since the e.xpanding of its ter- 

 minal bud "in May. It looks very much like an Ailanthus to 

 my iminstructed eyes, but I am told that its large white blos- 

 soms are pleasantly fragrant. 



One of the most interesting of the small trees in our shrub- 

 beries is Parrotia Persica. This has tine healthy foliage, 

 which resembles that of the Witch Hazel, but is lighter in 

 color and smaller in the size of leaves. The young growth is 

 a pretty shade of pink. The tree is very ornamental, grows 

 quite rapidly, and the foliage turns in the autumn to a tine dark 

 crimson, lightened and shaded with orange and green. The 

 blossoms come before the leaves, but our specimen has not 

 yet flowered. The Witch Hazel itself, which is a near relative 

 of Parottia, is a very pretty and interesting tree, and is worthy 

 of much more extensive planting than it receives. 



Rose Bi-alie, w. Va. Danskc Dandridge. 



Foreign Correspondence. 

 London Letter. 



THE Royal Horticultural Society's great annual exhi- 

 bition at the Temple has now become an important 

 event in London. The progress of the society in popular 

 as well as in professional favor is marked by the increased 

 success of these exhibitions every year. An enormous 

 crowd of people visited the show during the two days ; 

 even on the first day, when the price for admission was 

 five shillings, the four large marquees and lawns were 

 thronged with fashionable people, all more or less inter- 

 ested in the plants and in the society. If the Temple 

 Garden is small, it has the great advantage of being cen- 

 tral. The fact that the first day of the exhibitioii was the 

 Queen's birthday, when all the law courts, etc., are closed, 

 no doubt, had something to do with the exceptional num- 

 ber of visitors present on that day. As in previous years, 

 the principal feature of the exhibition this year was the 

 Orchids. Large collections of beautiful, rare, new and 

 well-grovs^n plants were contributed by the leading ama- 

 teurs and nurserymen who are specially interested in 

 Orchids. But while they were the first attraction, the col- 

 lections of Ferns, Roses, hardy Azaleas, Begonias, Glox- 

 inias, Clematis, herbaceous and alpine plants, stove foliage 

 plants, etc., were of first-rate quality, such as would have 

 made a grand exhibition had there been no Orchids at all. 

 An enthusiastic and energetic executive, popular favor and 

 •glorious weather could scarcely fail in enabling the society 

 to score a big success. 



There is a great change in the character of these large 

 plant exhibitions in London from what they used to be. 

 Old stagers bewail the absence of this or that family of 

 plants which once upon a time were favorites with ex- 

 Libitors. But for my own part I like the modern exhibi- 

 tion, with its large collections of good interesting plants, 

 represented by specimens such as any one can grow, far 

 better than those huge elephant specimens which made 

 ■everybody exclaim how wonderful, but really taught very 

 little gardening. Here from Mr. May, of Tottenham, and 

 Mr. Birkenhead, of Sale, were large collections of perfect 

 little specimens of Ferns, such as one could carry home 

 with him and keep in his own garden. Mr. Anthony 

 Waterer's beautiful exhibit of hardy Azaleas was of the 

 same character. You can take them and plant them in 

 your border, and if your garden is not a brick-field, they 

 will be better yet next year. The same is true of the 

 ■Orchids and other plants shown, no bedded-out specimens, 

 no stiffly trained, wired, wadded, gummed, pampered- 

 looking monsters, but good business-like plants, such as 

 .any gardener, let us hope, could grow. 



Of course, there were plenty of novelties ; far more, 

 indeed, than I shall be able to mention. I will begin with 

 the Orchids. The most beautiful specimen among these 

 was a plant of Coelogyne Dayand, from the gardens of 

 Baron Schrtjeder. It was in a basket a foot in diameter, and 

 bore twelve pendulous racemes of flowers each a yard long. 

 The Baron's collection was superb, both in interest and 

 good cultivation. Splendidly flowered Cymbidium Lowi- 

 anum (fourteen spikes), Masdevallia Houtteana, a large 

 tuft of leaves surrounded by a broad ruff of flowers ; 

 Odontoglossum Hallii, van xanthodon, O. excellens with a 

 twenty-flowered spike, O. crispum, var. apiatum, a gorgeous 

 variety, Dendrobium nobile, var. nobilius, Vanda teres, 

 Lselia purpurata, /Erides Savageanum, a deep crimson- 

 flowered variety, and the rare little Dendrobium-like Hex- 

 isea bidentata, which has numerous clusters of bright 

 scarlet flowers as large as those of D. Japonicum. Sir 

 Trevor Lawrence's collection was composed almost 

 entirely of rarities and plants of exceptional interest. 

 Among them were the new Sierra Leone Polystachyabrac- 

 teosa, with broad flattened pseudo-bulbs and drooping 

 scapes of brown and yellow hairy flowers ; Dendrobium 

 lamellatum, a remarkable little plant, with ancipitous 

 pseudo-bulbs and white and yellow flowers ; Megaclini- 

 ums ; Masdevallia Mundyana and M. hieroglyphica ; 

 Sarcochilus Fitzgeraldii ; Bulbophyllum Silemianum, with 

 yellow flowers, the lip crimson ; Cymbidium tigrinum, 

 Cypripedium Philippinense, Dendrobium Brymerianum 

 and many more. Noteworthy among the other collections 

 from amateurs were the following : Grammatophyllum 

 multiflorum, with a scape five feet high and forty-six flovi'- 

 ers, which suggested Vanda Lowii, being green-yellow 

 with deep chestnut blotches. Laelia majalis, rarely seen 

 in bloom, was here represented by a healthy plant bearing 

 two magnificent flowers. Brassias of various kinds ; Odon- 

 toglossum Karwinskii. La;lia purpurata variety, with the 

 whole lip colored deep maroon ; Phalsenopsis speciosa, and 

 many varieties of Dendrobium Phaleenopsis. The most re- 

 markable specimen Orchids were three huge plants of D. 

 nobile from the gardens of Viscountess Postrnan. Each plant 

 measured five feet in diameter and bore from a hundred 

 to a hundred and fifty pseudo-bulbs all in flower except the 

 immature ones, and each bearing from forty to fifty flow- 

 ers. It was generally admitted that no such well-grown 

 examples of Dendrobiums had ever been seen before. 



Among the nurserymen, the collection of Messrs. F. 

 Sander & Co. comprised a great number of beautiful and 

 rare plants. Cypripedium Chamberlainianum was repre- 

 sented by eight plants in flower, only two flowers being 

 open on each, the scape measuring about ten inches in 

 length ; the green and yellow sepals and petals and the 

 peculiar shade of purple of the large pouch are quite differ- 

 ent from any other cultivated Cypripedium known to me. 

 A variety called excellens differs from the type in having 

 a cream-colored dorsal sepal. C. Vipani, a hybrid between 

 C. niveum and C. l^vigatum, is a pretty plant, with white 

 flowers streaked with crimson on the sepals and petals. C. 

 Exul was shown under a glass case, a distinction it scarcely 

 merited. Oncidium Gravesianum, a new Sanderian spe- 

 cies allied to O. prjetextum, O. Rolfeanum ; Cattleya 

 Mossiee, var. Arnoldiana, white with purple shading on the 

 front lobe of the lip, and yellow and brown-purple in the 

 throat ; C. Schroderas, var. virginalis ; Odontoglossum ex- 

 cellens, a beautiful variety ; O. Amesice, a supposed natu- 

 ral hybrid between O. crispum and O. Coradinei ; it has 

 large well-formed flowers, white, w^ith conspicuous blotches 

 of chestnut-brown ; O. crispum, var. Wellsianum, with 

 large white flowers, the blotches of exceptional size, and 

 the segments deeply laciniated ; O. crispum, var. Sanderi- 

 anum, with flowers as fine as those of Veitch's variety, but 

 with more reddish brown. This is a wonderful plant, and 

 an enormous price had been paid for it — higher than any 

 ever yet paid for a single Orchid. O. Lowryanum has 

 olive-brown flowers, with a little green, and a blotcli of 

 white on the labellum. O. Pescatoiei, var. Schrcederae, 



