134 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 476. 



been grown in Europe since 1862, when it was introduced 

 into France from Peru and cultivated with success by Mon- 

 sieur Naudin, the author of the name. The fruit is cylin- 

 drical, four inches long by nearly two inches in diame- 

 ter, of a rich orange-red color when ripe. It exhales a 

 powerful apple-like perfume, and, according to Sir Joseph 

 Hooker, it is used in America as a preservative against the 

 attacks of noxious insects, both from the person and from 

 garments, etc. But I have never heard of its being eaten. 

 A second species, S. atropurpurea, was described and fig- 

 ured in the Revue Horticole in 1894 by Monsieur Ed. Andre, 

 who introduced it from Uruguay. It has fruits five inches 

 long, pale claret-colored when ripe, and apple-scented. 

 Monsieur Andre recommended it as an elegant green- 

 leaved climber and for cultivation on trellises in southern 

 Europe. The plant grown in the United States as S. odo- 

 rifera is said to have fruits a foot long. Can any one send 

 seeds to Kevv of this American plant, the "Casabanana" ? 



Hodgsonia heteroclita. — This magnificent perennial Cu- 

 curbit has been in cultivation at Kew for at least twenty 

 years, and although it grows with a vigor equal to that of 

 wild plants, it has never yet flowered. It is a native of 

 low elevations in eastern Bengal. Sir Joseph Hooker 

 named, figured and described it in his Illustrations of Hima- 

 layan Plants, tabs. 1-3, where we are informed that its 

 stems grow to a length of a hundred feet or more, climbing 

 the forest trees from which it sometimes hangs and forms 

 a dense screen of dark green plane-like foliage. The flowers 

 are large, red, brown and yellow outside, white inside, about 

 four inches across and surrounded by a hanging fringe of 

 tendril-like filaments four inches long. They are produced 

 abundantly by wild plants and often may be seen strew- 

 ing the ground in the forests, although the stems are lost in 

 the vegetation above. It is, perhaps, the most striking in 

 flower of all the Cucurbitaceae, and I call attention to it 

 here as the conditions in the southern states, say California 

 for instance, are likely to suit it better than those of this 

 country. 



Snake Gourds. — Several species of Trichosanthes are 

 worth including among ornamental climbers for the stove. 

 They grow quickly, seeds sown in March producing plants 

 which will be fruitful in July if grown in a moist sunny 

 stove where their stems can be trained along rafters so that 

 the fruits can hang well in view. It is necessary to see 

 that the female flowers are fertilized artificially, as the plants 

 are usually dioecious. At Kew these and similar tropical 

 Cucurbitacere are grown in the same house as the Water- 

 lilies, where they are planted in a narrow border and the 

 stems trained to wires over the tank, where, when the 

 fruits are ripe, they make a striking and novel show, hang- 

 ing like brilliant-colored snakes from the roof. The best 

 are T. anguina, with fruits a foot long ; T. colubrina, with 

 fruits two feet long ; T. cucumerina, with fruits like small 

 cucumbers ; T. palmata, with globose fruits the size of 

 small oranges. They are all scarlet, with streaks of yellow, 

 white and green. The flowers are large, white, with the 

 corolla lobes divided into hair-like filaments. 



Crassula aloides. — This very interesting new species of 

 Crassula has been introduced to Kew from the Transvaal, 

 where it was discovered on hillsides in damp places near 

 Barbertonatan elevation of from 2,000 to 4, 000 feet. Accord- 

 ing to Mr. E. Galpin, who sent seeds of it to Kew in 1891, it 

 grows to a gigantic size, with a thick, unbranched, Aloe- 

 like stem bearing a rosette of fleshy, lanceolate, bright 

 green, flaccid leaves a foot or more long, nearly three inches 

 broad at the base, and tapering gradually to a long recurved 

 point ; they are much like the leaves of an Aloe, and not at 

 all like any Crassula known to me. The flowers are 

 equally remarkable, being borne in a dense corymbose 

 head eighteen inches in diameter on a peduncle three to 

 four feet high, and they are colored cream-yellow. At Kevv 

 this plant thrives only when kept in a moist stove and 

 shaded from bright sunshine. No one unacquainted 

 with it would hesitate to call it an Aloe, or some closely 

 allied plant. It excites as much interest at Kew as 



Richea pandanifolia, an Epacris with the appearance of a 

 Pandanus. 



Podophyllum pleianthum. — This remarkable plant was 

 discovered in the island of Formosa in 1881, and four years 

 later it was introduced to Kew, where it flowered, and was 

 figured in The Botanical Magazine, t. 7098. It is a near 

 ally of the North American Mandrake, May-apple or Duck's- 

 foot, Podophyllum peltatum, but differs markedly in having 

 a cluster of about a dozen large drooping flowers springing 

 from the axil of the pair of large peltate, lobed, glossy 

 green leaves, and in their deep purple color. Last year 

 some plants of it were placed in a sheltered border outside 

 against a greenhouse, and they have survived the past 

 winter without protection. It is also grown in a cold green- 

 house, where it produces leaves a foot in diameter and its 

 odoriferous flowers in August. P. peltatum and the Ne- 

 palese P. Emodi, a pink-flowered species, are grown suc- 

 cessfully in the open air at Kew, where they ripen their 

 large bright red fruits in autumn. P. pleianthum is a hand- 

 some as well as interesting addition to herbaceous plants 

 suitable for cultivation in borders. 



Yellow Richardias. — Some cultivators in this country 

 have failed with the two yellow-spathed Richardias, 

 Elliottiana and Pentlandii, though treating them as cool 

 greenhouse plants, and others through keeping the tubers 

 quite dry during winter. My experience is that they 

 must have warm greenhouse, even stove treatment, while 

 growing, and when at rest they should be kept in moist 

 soil, as we keep Caladiums. All tuberous-rooted Aroids, 

 without exception, are better rested moist than dry ; indeed, 

 this treatment is in accordance with the conditions under 

 which they grow naturally. Last year I planted six small 

 tubers of R. Pentlandii in a border in a moist stove where 

 tropical Water-lilies are grown, and they grew with excep- 

 tional vigor, the tubers being as large as a child's fist when 

 lifted at the end of the season. Our plants were started a 

 month ago in a stove, and they are now growing strongly. 

 With these two exceptions, all the Richardias may be 

 grown in an ordinary greenhouse or frame along with such 

 plants as Pelargoniums. TTr TTr 



London. W. WatSOU. 



New or Little-known Plants. 



Sambucus melanocarpa. 



THIS shrub (see illustration on page 135 of this issue), 

 which was long confounded with the red-fruited 

 Sambucus racemosa of high northern latitudes in both 

 the New and Old Worlds, was first distinguished by Gray in 

 the Synoptical Flora of North America* by its black fruits, 

 more convex clusters of whiter flowers and less pubescent 

 foliage. In habit and in the shape of the leaves the two 

 plants are very similar, and it is practically impossible to 

 distinguish them, except when the fruit is ripe. 



Sambucus melanocarpa, which attains a height of five 

 or six feet, is common in the northern Rocky Mountains, 

 where it grows near banks of streams and on the sides of 

 moist canons usually at elevations of from three thousand 

 to eight tho'usand feet above the sea-level, and flowers 

 from May until July. It is common, according to Macoun,"j" 

 from the valley of the Columbia, near Donald, in British 

 Columbia, through the Selkirk Mountain region, growing 

 on the beds of snow-slides and in damp thickets. It is 

 abundant in northern Montana and Idaho,J and in the 

 Yellowstone National Park in the neighborhood of the 

 Mammoth Hot Springs; audit was reported by Gray as grow- 

 ing on the mountains of eastern Oregon, southward to the 

 Wasatch Range in Utah, in New Mexico, and on the Sierra 

 Nevada of California. 



Sambucus melanocarpa has not yet been tried in our gar- 

 dens, where, no doubt, it will prove hardy. 



Mr. J. B. Leiberg has recently separated from Sambucus 



* i., pt. ii., 8 (1884). 



t Macoun, Cat. Can. PI., 539. 



X Holzinger, Contrib. U. S. Nat. Herb., iii., 229. 



