September 26, 



8.] 



Garden and Forest. 



371 



distributed and the most valuable timber trees of the islands, 

 although now fast disappearing of merchantable size, are 

 Metrosideros polymorpha and Acacia Koa. The former, 

 which is the most generally prevailing tree on the islands, 

 between 1,500 and 6,000 feet elevation, produces a 

 very hard wood, highly esteemed for fuel, and sometimes 

 used in building. The Acacia, Dr. Hillebrand considers the 

 most valuable tree on the islands. The wood makes excellent 

 fuel, and is much used for building and for cabinet work, for 

 which its beautiful grain well adapts it. It was from the trunks 

 of this tree that the natives cut their great war-canoes. Coni- 

 fercB have no representative in this flora, a fact much less re- 

 markable tlian that, besides the Cocoanut, there is but one 

 genus of Palms [Pritcliardia, a Polynesian genus of three spe- 

 cies) with two species. Some interesting plants in the 

 Hawaiian flora are a Dock {Rumex gigantea), with a woody 

 base, which grows up among the trees of the forest to a height 

 of forty feet ; a Geranium, with a stout trunk, twelve feet high, 

 and the shrubby or arborescent members of the Lobelia 

 family, with fragrant flowers. Dr. Hillebrand, who left the 

 islands as early as 1871, did not, unfortunately, live to see his 

 book passed through the press, and his notes upon the distri- 

 bution of species and the various aspects of the vegetation of 

 this group of islands are left in a fragmentary and unfinished 

 condition ; and it is to his son, Dr. W. F. Hillebrand, of the 

 Smithsonian Institute, that the last cares of publication have 

 descended. 



The "Outlines of Botany," written by Mr. Bentham, to pre- 

 cede the British and Colonial Floras, prepared in the herbarium 

 of the Royal Gardens at Kew, is joined to the present work. 



Periodical Literature. 



Chambers' Journal for July contains an interesting article on 

 "The Kola Nut," which is an abstract of an address delivered 

 before the Fiji Agricultural Association, combined with ex- 

 tracts from Mr. T. Christy's book on " New Commercial Plants 

 and Drugs." The tree which bears this nut is the Siercii/ia 

 acuminata, a native of the west coast of Africa, between 

 Sierra Leone and the Congo, and cultivated in the East and 

 West Indies. It begins to bear in the fourth or fifth year after 

 planting, but does not produce a full crop until it is ten years 

 old, when its yield averages 120 pounds of seed. Two col- 

 lections of seed are annually made, one in the autumn and 

 one in the spring months. " When the fruit is ripe it takes a 

 brownish-yellow color, and in this condition dehiscence of the 

 capsule commences along tlie ventral suture, exposing red 



and white seeds in the same shell As many as 



five ripe carpels mav result from a single flower and these 

 may each contain from five to fifteen seeds; but in some cases 

 carpels are found containing only a single seed. The seeds 

 removed from their envelope weigh .... from five to 

 twenty-five or twenty-eight grammes. The epidermis is the 

 principal site of the coloring matter, and Ijeneath it is a tissue 

 consisting of a mass of cells gorged with large starch gran- 

 ules, comparable to potato starch. It is in these cells that 

 the alkaloids, caffeine and theobromine, are found in the free 

 state." 



In preparing the seeds for transportation, they are removed 

 from their husks, freed of their skins, carefully picked over, 

 and packed in large -bark baskets lined and covered with 

 leaves of Bol [Sterculia hetcrophylla). If these leaves are 

 constantly kept moist and the seeds are picked over and re- 

 packed about once a month, they may be kept in good condi- 

 tion for long periods, and are, in fact, thus transported from 

 near Gambia and Goree to the Soudan or Timbuctoo, and 

 thence to Tripoli or Morocco. 



The value of the Kola nut is great, both as an article of 

 food and as a medicine. It contains five times as much caf- 

 feine as tea and more even than coffee, and is a remedy for 

 nervous complaints, heart troubles and digestive derange- 

 ments. Prepared as chocolate, with sugar and vanilla, it is 

 ten times more nutritious than cocoa, and the use now made 

 of it in English hospitals confirms the verdict of the natives 

 of west Africa, who are accustomed to depend largely upon 

 it for subsistence in long caravan journeys. In the interior of 

 the country it is so highly prized, that a dry powder formed 

 from it is purchased l)y an equal weight of gold dust. Its 

 uses here are not simply dietary, but, so to say, social. An 

 interchange of white Kola nuts between rival chieftains means 

 peace; of red ones, a challenge. Proposals of marriage are 

 made with white Kola nuts, are accepted in the same man- 

 ner, and refused with red ones. Oaths are administered by a 

 person stretching out his hand over Kola nuts while he swears, 

 and eating them immediately afterwards. 



The Kola tree grows in low, damp or even marshy ground, 

 and will flourish from the sea level up to an elevation of a 

 thousand feet. Its cultivation is strongly recommended by 

 Mr. Christy, as it is more easily raised than the Cocoa 

 plalit, and as the superior nutritive qualities of its fruit become 

 better known, the demand for it rapidly increases. 



Naudin, in the Manuel de V Accliinateicr, speaking of the 

 properties of the Kola, calls attention to the fact that it is 

 often confounded with a false Kola called Kola male, or " Bit- 

 ter Kola," which is produced by a shrub of the Gtittifcra: 

 [Garcinea Kola), which grows in the same regions. The 

 mistake is often made bv the natives, although the properties 

 of the two nuts are cjuite different. 



Recent Plant Portraits. 



Begonia geranioides, Bulletino de la R. Societa Toscana di 

 Orticultura, July ; a white flowered South African species, of 

 botanical rather than of horticultural interest. 



Spathoglottis AUREA, Gardeners' Chronicle, ]\x\\ 28th; from 

 the plant which, under the name of Spathoglottis Kiinhalliana, 

 recently received a certificate from the Royal Horticultural 

 Society of London. "The cultural treatment it requires is much 

 the same as that afforded to the genus Bletia, the material 

 used in potting being turfy, yellow loam, peat and sphagnum 

 moss, with a little silver sand added — the Spathoglottis being 

 terrestrial plants. Spathoglottis aurea was first sold at Stevens' 

 rooms by its importers, F. Sander & Co., in September, 1886, 

 with a glowing, but it must be observed, an accurate descrip- 

 tion. It forms an admirable companion to the beautiful 

 Spathoglottis angustorum, which is the same in general 

 appearance, but white and rose, and the rather smaller bright 

 Rose, S. plicatum." 



Clematis coccinea, Revue Horticole, August ist ; an ad- 

 mirable figure of this now well known Texas species. 



Botanical Maga::ine, May, Trevesia palmata, 7008; "one 

 of the inost conspicuous features of the tropical jungles of the 

 Central and Eastern Himalaya, Assam, and the hot, humid 

 regions of the Khasia Mountains and Chittagong, where its 

 slender stem, crowned with terminal whorls of spreading, 

 broad, fan-shaped, long-petioled leaves, rising al:)Ove the her- 

 baceous forest undergrowth, at once attracts attention." The 

 greenish white flowers, in long peduncled panicles, are not 

 showy, and emit a heavy, disagreeable odor. 



ECHINOCACTUS Haselbergii, t. 7009 ; a dwarf species of un- 

 known origin, three inches in diameter, covered with slender 

 spines, and producing small orange-red flowers. 



Sarcochilus Hartmanxi, t. 7010; a delicate Orchid from 

 the mountain forests of Queensland, with white flowers three- 

 quarters of an inch in iliameter, the sub-similar sepals and 

 petals handsomely blotched with red near their base. 



Aristolochia Westlandi, /. 7011 ; a large-flowered species, 

 native of southern China. 



Narcissus Pseudo-Narcissus, var. Johnstoni, t. 7012 ; a 

 native of the neighborhood of Oporto. 



Heuchera Sanguinea, Gardeners' Chronicle, August 4th. 



Styr.ax Obassia, Gardeners' Chronicle, Aue;ust 4th ; a well 

 known and hardy Japanese species, and, so far as the foliage 

 is concerned, the hardiest of the genus. 



Nephrodium Tuerckheimii, Botanical Gazette, t. 11, July, 

 1888 ; a native of Guatemala. 



Cyrtopodium SaintleGERIANUM, Gardeners' Chronicle, 

 August i8th ; " this may be regarded as the showiest form of 

 the variable C. pmictatum, from which it does not seem to 

 differ in botanical features ; it is, however, far handsomer 

 than the general run of the species, and the liracts, which are 

 highly developed, are barred and blotched with chestnut-red 

 of the same bright hue as that seen on the yellow flower- 

 segments." 



Stuartia Pseudo-Camellia, Gardeners' Chronicle, August 

 1 8th. 



Proliferous Strawberry, with flowers produced from the 

 side. Gardeners' Chronicle, August i8th ; an interesting figure 

 as illustrating the true character of the strawberry, which is 

 not a berry, as is popularly supposed, and not even a fruit, 

 but the swollen and enlarged end of the flower stalk, the true 

 fruit of the strawberry being the small dry stones, improperly 

 called seeds. That the strawberry is really an enlarged stem 

 the buds developed from the side of the specimen figured very 

 clearly show. One of these is so perfectly organized tliat it 

 has leaves, the commencement of a runner and a perfectly 

 developed terminal flower. 



Salix phvlicoides, Botanical Gazette, ]\\\\, 1S88 ; an Alas- 

 kan and East Siberian species of Willow, 



