154 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 478. 



flower-scapes are now developing. The first two racemes 

 opened about a week ago and gave us a foretaste of what 

 we are to expect about the middle of April. What a lovely 

 plant it is ! flowers like those of the Sweet Pea, but of the 

 richest carmine-crimson which glows in sunshine. This is a 

 first-rate plant for the greenhouse here ; it is perennial, 

 stands London fog and yields a large crop of richly colored 

 flowers in early spring. A figure drawn from the Kew plant 

 has been prepared for The Botanical Magazine. 



Hibiscus mutabilis. — The double-flowered variety of this 

 Hibiscus is a worthy garden plant, which, however, is 

 rarely seen in cultivation — in European gardens, at any 

 rate. Mr. Cannell sent me some flowers of it a few days 

 ago, describing it as a new Mallow, and by far the finest 

 he had ever seen ; they were three inches across, very 

 double, and colored bright rose, flaked with white. 

 Originally Chinese, the type has long been cultivated or 

 become established in most parts of the tropics. The 

 double-flowered form was first flowered in London about 

 a hundred years ago, plants having been raised from seeds 

 obtained from Jamaica, where it forms a tree fifteen to 

 twenty feet high, with palmately lobed, green, hairy leaves 

 four to six inches across ; the flowers are borne singly on 

 axillary peduncles, and they are white when first they open, 

 changing to pink, and finally to deep red. There is a good 

 figure of this double variety in Andrews' Botanical Reposi- 

 tory, t. 228. 



Narcissus, Ellen Willmot. — This is a new variety or cross 

 of the Ajax section which we owe to the skill of the Rev. 

 G. H. Engleheart, of Andover, one of the most successful 

 breeders of Daffodils. It has the form of Madame de Graaf 

 or Empress, but is larger, and is remarkable for the width 

 and shortness of its trumpet and its broad overlapping 

 sepals and petals. The color of the trumpet is lemon- 

 yellow, while the other parts are creamy white. 



Narcissus, Southern Star, is another new seedling from 

 the same source. It is one of the Poeticus section, but the 

 flowers are about four inches across, with broad overlap- 

 ping segments of the purest white, and the shallow, spread- 

 ing, eye-like cup is nearly an inch across, and colored 

 bright orange-red, becoming paler toward the base. 



Tulipa Kaufmanniana. — A first-class certificate was 

 awarded to this plant last week, when it was shown in 

 fine condition by Messrs. P. Barr & Sons, Covent Garden, 

 and Messrs. Wallace, Colchester. It has a short stem, 

 broad leaves and large erect flowers, the segments of which 

 are oblong-obovate, forming a deep cup, their color yellow 

 at the base, the upper portion white, suffused with rose- 

 purple. It is reported that this species is being naturalized 

 in the garden of Mr. L. de Rothschild at Leighton Buzzard, 

 where it does well in the grass, and was in flower on March 

 23d. According to a correspondent in The Gardeners 

 Chronicle, it flowered outside in a garden in Salisbury on 

 February 26th. For its introduction we are indebted to 

 Mr. A. Regel, who found it in Turkestan some years 

 ago. It appears to vary in the form and color of its flower- 

 segments and also in its leaves, judging by the figure in 

 Regel's Garlenjlora and the plants shown by Messrs. Barr 

 and Wallace. It belongs to Baker's Eriobulbce, which has 

 woolly outer bulb-coats and broad leaves. There is a 

 hybrid between it and Tulipa Greigii, received by Herr 

 Max Leichtlin a year or two ago. „, „. 



London. W. WotSOtl. 



A bulb is simply a large bud with close-packed, fleshy leaves 

 or leaf-bases in which is stored an accumulation of starch, 

 sugar and other concentrated plant food. As hibernating 

 animals store up fatty matter before going to sleep for the 

 winter so do bulbs store up surplus food and hide themselves 

 under ground so as to go through cold and drought un- 

 harmed. Bulbous plants are developed in regions where 

 there are sudden changes of temperature or of drought and 

 moisture, and the great natural bulb fields of the world are 

 found where it is very cold or very dry in winter, rainy and 

 warm in spring, and blazing hot and dry in summer and 

 autumn. — F. IV. Burbidge, M.A. 



Entomological. 



An Enemy of Narcissus and Amaryllis. 



IN Merodon equestris, the Narcissus Fly, we have one 

 more addition to the numerous insects which have been 

 introduced from the Old to the New World. Its first advent 

 in the United States appears to have been many years ago, 

 for Packard, in his Guide to the Study of Insects, published 

 in 1869, states that the late F. G. Sanborn bred the flies 

 from larvae which were probably introduced by importers 

 of Dutch bulbs. Since that time the pest does not seem to 

 have become common in this country, at least it appears 

 to have been rarely, if ever, noticed by economic ento- 

 mologists, although gardeners may have had more expe- 

 rience with it than is generally known. 



In the Agassiz Museum, at Cambridge, Massachusetts, 

 there are larvse of this pest and damaged bulbs of Narcissus 

 which were received from a garden in Brookline, Massa- 

 chusetts, in 1879. During the past year or two this same 

 establishment has suffered more than usual damage from 

 the ravages of the Merodon, which appears to have been 

 present in more or less abundance every season since it 

 was first noticed in the place nearly twenty years ago. At 

 that time, besides various species and varieties of Narcis- 

 sus, it was found to attack bulbs of Vallota purpurea and 

 its varieties. Recently it has been found very destructive 

 to many rare and beautiful Hippeastrum hybrids, formerly 

 known under the generic name of Amaryllis, and it is prob- 

 able that it will be found to attack other plants of the Ama- 

 ryllis family, to which the Narcissus belongs. There 

 does not appear to be any previous record that it has 

 ever attacked anything except Narcissus. The pest has 

 affected bulbs, both in the open air and in the greenhouse. 

 The damage is caused by stout brownish maggots which 

 live within and devour the interior of the bulb, either 

 entirely destroying its vitality or so weakening it that it 

 fails to flower or gradually decays. These maggots when 

 full grown vary in length from about half an inch or a little 

 more when the body is in repose to about three-fourths of 

 an inch when active and extended. The body is somewhat 

 wrinkled, composed of eleven or twelve distinguishable seg- 

 ments, upon which are a few very minute hairs. The head 

 is very small and armed with a blackish two-pronged hook 

 used in scraping the bulb, and on the posterior or anal seg- 

 ment there is a conspicuous hard, shining, black double-tubed 

 organ, and a little below each side of this is a short horn-like 

 appendage. When fully grown the maggots usually leave 

 the bulbs and enter the surrounding earth near its surface, 

 or rarely remain in the remnants of the bulbs, and change 

 to stout dark brown inert pupae, about half an inch in length 

 and retain some of the marks characteristic of the larvae. 

 From these pupae flies emerge in the spring if the bulbs are 

 out-of-doors, or during the winter if they are grown under 

 glass. These flies are two-winged and bear considerable 

 resemblance to the well-known bot-flies, or to the Chrys- 

 anthemum flies, Eristalis tenax, familiar on flowers in late 

 summer and autumn. They might be mistaken for very 

 small humble-bees, except for the fact that the latter have 

 four wings, while the Narcissus fly has only two. These 

 wings spread an inch or more from tip to tip and may be 

 nearly clear or slightly smoky. 



The body averages over half an inch in length and is 

 sometimes nearly three-fourths of an inch long. The 

 body-color is usually bluish-black, more or less densely 

 covered with broad areas or bands of orange, yellow, 

 brownish or blackish hairs. The color and proportions of 

 these areas of colored hairs are so variable as to have caused 

 the early entomologists to give Merodon equestris several 

 other specific names, but it would not be profitable to con- 

 sider these variations here. Most commonly the male has 

 the fore part of the top of the thorax thickly covered with 

 yellow-brown hair, a broad black band or saddle across 

 the middle above the insertion of the wings, the posterior 

 tip of the thorax and first two segments of the abdomen 



