244 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 487. 



same way as the Carpenteria here noted. It is by far the 

 largest-flowered of all the species of Philadelphia in culti- 

 vation here. 



Dendromecon rigidum. — We make poor progress with this 

 plant, which is described as a handsome shrub in California 

 and very floriferous. We have it planted against a south 

 wall, a less-sheltered position being uncongenial, but it 

 grows slowly, and is decidedly thin, " a weedy, wiry-look- 

 ing object," Mr. Gumbleton called it. This gentleman is 

 of opinion that we have not got the true Dendromecon 

 rigidum. The flowers are of a rich yellow color, about an 

 inch in diameter and Poppy-like, or, to be exact, like those 

 of the Welsh Poppy, Meconopsis Cambrica. Possibly our 

 plants are too small to judge by — they are at present about 

 a foot high— but they have been flowering freely for the 

 past month or more. When discovered by D. Douglas in 

 California, about forty years ago, it was introduced and 

 grown by Messrs. Veitch in their Exeter nursery, where it 

 proved quite hardy. A figure prepared from this introduc- 

 tion represents it as a sturdy bush with straw-colored 

 branches, rigid, lanceolate entire leaves three inches long 

 and flowers two inches across. Are two forms of this spe- 

 cies known ? 



[There is a second species of Dendromecon, D. Hors- 

 fordii, a stout bush, sometimes fifteen feet high, with oval 

 or broadly oblong obtuse leaves and larger flowers. This 

 grows on the California Islands, and is a handsomer 

 plant than the mainland D. rigidum, which is always un- 

 attractive in habit, with slender erect wiry stems, and 

 hardly worth growing, except as a curiosity. — Ed.] 



Carpenteria Californica. — This plant is not a success in 

 the open air at Kew, and I learn that even in the south of 

 Ireland it does not thrive outside, the leaves turning par- 

 tially brown and the flowers coming deformed and irregular. 

 But grown under glass it has proved quite satisfactory. In 

 a conservatory at Kew there is a pyramid-shaped shrub of 

 it six feet high with healthy leaves and bearing numerous 

 erect racemes of the purest white saucer-shaped flowers. 

 Mr. Bennett-Poe also grows this plant successfully by 

 planting it in tubs and placing it outside in the summer, 

 removing it into a vinery and keeping it fairly dry on the 

 approach of cold weather. It is one of the most beautiful 

 shrubs we owe to the United States, and that is saying a 

 great deal, but it requires the protection of a greenhouse 

 during winter, and its flowers only come perfect when 

 opened under glass. 



Magnolia fuscata. — Although comparatively small and 

 dull-colored in its flowers, this Chinese Magnolia has long 

 been grown as a garden plant on account of its powerful 

 and delicious fragrance. There is a large bush of it in the 

 large temperate house at Kew, which is nearly always in 

 flower, scenting the whole house at times. A plant is also 

 established on a south-east wall outside, having been there 

 about three years, and it grows and flowers so freely that 

 one begins to wonder if it is not a hardy shrub, after all. 

 At any rate, it is worth a position on such a wall as that 

 described, the odor of its flowers being particularly pleas- 

 ing. It has withstood all the frost we have had during the 

 last two years, so that one may gauge its hardiness as 

 equal to a minimum temperature of about twenty degrees, 

 Fahrenheit. „. „. , 



London. W. WatSOtl. 



New or Little-known Plants. 



Robinsonella, a New Genus of Tree Mallows.* 



THE recent collections of Mexican and Central Ameri- 

 can plants are full of little-known and new species, and 

 even new genera are not uncommon. It is rare, however, 

 to discover a genus of trees, and especially one as attractive 

 as this one.f 



In Mr. E. W. Nelson's last collection and the recent dis- 

 tributions of Mr. C. G. Pringle and Captain John Donnell 

 Smith are two undescribed species which, with one here- 

 tofore anomalous species generally referred to Sida, seem 

 to constitute a new generic type. The species are all small 

 trees or shrubs with large and palmately lobed or veined 

 leaves and large white or pale lilac-colored flowers. Some 

 of the species are very handsome and worthy of cultiva- 

 tion, but since all come from southern countries they can 

 hardly be used outside of greenhouses, although one of 

 them, and perhaps the handsomest, comes from the moun- 

 tains about Oaxaca, where it was found at an altitude of 

 7,500 feet. 



This new genus belongs to the Mallow family. Its 

 technical characters place it in the subtribe Sidese and near 

 the genus Sida, from the typical species of which it differs 

 in habit, in color and size of flowers, and especially in the 

 character of its carpels. 



The differences in the carpels are several and very impor- 

 tant. While in both genera the ovules are solitary and pen- 

 dulous in the young carpels, in the new genus the upper 

 part of the carpel rapidly develops, leaving the seed at the 

 base, which thus appears as if it originated at the base, and 

 in, at least, one of the species the attachment is so low that 

 the free end of the'seed is pushed up and becomes erect. 

 The carpels are much inflated, of thin papery texture 

 throughout, never reticulated, obtuse at apex, and do not 

 in the least suggest a Sida. They are tardily dehis- 

 cent, seeming to split from the base up along the back ; 

 the seed often hangs by a slender thread which runs along 

 its back the full length of the carpel. The calyx is much 

 smaller than the fruit, the sepals never connivent or en- 

 closing it, as in Sida, but more or less open, or even 

 reflexed. 



The genus as we now understand it is composed of five 

 species, two of which are Mexican, one Central American 

 and two South American. 



We take pleasure in dedicating this genus to Dr. B. L. 

 Robinson, the Curator of the Gray Herbarium, whose 

 contributions to American botany deserve to be com- 

 memorated in this beautiful genus of Tree Mallows. The 

 species as we understand them are the following : 



Robinsonella cordata.* (See figure 31, page 246). 

 The collection of this tree by both Mr. Nelson and 

 Mr. Pringle in 1895 first led to our recognizing the 

 new genus. The species is, perhaps, the handsomest 

 of the group. It must, however, be very rare, which, 

 perhaps, accounts for its having been overlooked by 

 previous collectors. Mr. Pringle wrote, under date of 

 March 15, 1897, as follows: "I saw only two plants. 

 One was a shrubby plant on the rocky bluff of a canon 

 (and only seen from the railroad train), the other was the 

 tree, about twenty-five feet high, from which I took speci- 

 mens, then coming into flower. I got nothing to show the 

 character of the fruit. I climbed into the top of this tree, 

 and remember it as of upright habit with a trunk of about 

 a foot. It cannot be abundant in the vicinity of Oaxaca, 

 for I traveled thereabouts extensively and saw only the 

 single specimen growing on the slope of the Sierra de San 

 Felipe, some seven miles above that city." 



* Published by permission of the Secretary, Smithsonian Institution. 



t Robinsonella Rose & Baker fil., gen. nov. Bractlets at base ot calyx, none. 

 Calyx 5-cleft or lobed. Stamens united into a slender column, divided at apex into 

 numerous filaments. Cells of ovary 9 to 13, i-ovuled ; style branches filiform ; 

 stigmas capitate. Ovule solitary, hanging; mature carpels much inflated and 



spreading, united only at the base, obtuse at the apex, and perhaps tardily dehis- 

 cent; seed 1, attached near the bottom of the mature carpel, appearing as it coming 

 from the base, and filling only a small part of it. 



Shrubs or small trees. Leaves palmately lobed or veined. Flowers large, white 

 or pale lilac. 



* Robinsonella cordata, Rose & Baker, sp. nov. Trees 15 to 25 feet high, much 

 branched ; branches with dark gray wrinkled bark, pubescent, tardily becoming 

 glabrate ; mature leaves broadly ovate with cordate base, simple, acuminate, 5 to 7 

 nerved, slightly crenate, nearly glabrous above, paler and softly pubescent beneath, 

 3 to 4 inches long, i>~ to 3 inches wide ; petioles 1 to 1% inches long, villous pubes- 

 cent ; flowers borne in the axils of the old leaves in small clusters of 3 to 5 on short 

 peduncles ; pedicels slender and weak, 5 to 10 lines long, jointed near the middle, 

 clothed with short stellate pubescence and with longer simple hairs ; calyx deeply 

 5-parted, densely stellate, with or without villous hairs ; flowers 2 inches in diame- 

 ter, pale lilac ; styles 12 to 13 ; stigmas capitate ; carpels 12 to 13, distinct nearly to 

 the base, somewhat inflated, obtuse, thin, stellate, one-seeded ; seed glabrous, fill- 

 ing but a small part of the carpel. 



Collected by Mr. E, W. Nelson near Tamazulapam, State of Oaxaca, Mexico, alti- 

 tude 6,500 to 7,000 feet, November 16, 1894 (No. 1955), and also by Mr. Pringle on 

 the Sierra de San Felipe, altitude 7,500 feet, 1895 (No. 6244). Distributed as Malva 

 subtri flora. 



