266 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 489. 



grass walks among- them, planted with masses of all kinds 

 of showy species and subspecies — is now a great attrac- 

 tion. Nothing could be finer than Crimson Rambler, Car- 

 mine Pillar, the various forms of Rosa lutea, R. Indica, R. 

 damascena, R. involucrata, R. moschata and R. rugosa 

 when planted in bold masses either as in this Rose garden 

 or in conspicuous places on lawns. 



Vanda Agnes Joachim. — This is a hybrid raised at Singa- 

 pore a few years ago from Vanda teres and V. Hookeri. 

 It was named and described by Mr. Ridley, and afterward 

 passed into the collection of Sir Trevor Lawrence, by 

 whom it was shown in flower at a meeting of the 

 Royal Horticultural Society, receiving a first-class cer- 

 tificate. Apparently it has inherited the robust free 

 habit of V. teres, and shows none of the spindliness of the 

 other parent. It bore a spike nearly two feet long carrying 

 nine flowers and buds, which are like those of V. teres, but 

 the lip has a larger midlobe, and the color of the whole 

 flower is of a softer pink, with tinges of purple and yellow. 

 It cannot be considered much superior to V. teres as a gar- 

 den plant, but it is interesting as being the first hybrid 

 Vanda raised artificially. 



Large-flowered Cattleyas are becoming abundant. They 

 were numerous at the Temple Show, and at the last meet- 

 ing of the Royal Horticultural Society four new ones 

 obtained certificates. The names of these are noteworthy : 

 Laelio-Cattleya Dominiana, var. Empress of India ; L.-C. 

 Our Queen ; Cattleya Mossiae, Empress of India, and C. 

 Mossiae, In Memoriam, Richard Curnow. The last-named 

 is, perhaps, the largest variety of C. Mossiae known, and 

 its colors are equally rich and striking. It was shown by 

 Messrs. H. Low & Co., and the name is intended to com- 

 memorate one of their collectors. Among other good Cat- 

 tleyas with bad names exhibited at this meeting were 

 Lselio-Cattleya Canhamiana Langleyensis, L.-C. Canhami- 

 ana, var. Sappho, and L.-C. Canhamiana, var. Iolanthe. 

 Judging by the large number of handsome forms of C. 

 Mossiae which have been exhibited in London recently, 

 some new collecting ground must have been discovered 

 for it. There is no more beautiful Cattleya than a good 

 C. Mossiae. 



London. 



and about three-quarters of an inch long. The fruit ripens 

 early in June, and is oblong, one-third of an inch long, 

 light bright blue and suspended on slender nodding stems. 

 Lonicera gracilipes is occasionally found in American 

 and European gardens under the name of Lonicera or 

 Zelostium Philomella., 



W. Watson. 



New or Little-known Plants. 



Lonicera gracilipes. 



THIS bush Honeysuckle is a native of Japan, where 

 it is not uncommon on the borders of mountain 

 forests in central Hondo, and has been cultivated for ten 

 years in the Arnold Arboretum, where it is perfectly hardy 

 and has attained the height of four feet, forming a broad 

 vigorous shrub. 



Lonicera gracilipes* (see fig. 34, on page 265 of this 

 issue, made by Mr. Faxon in the Arboretum) is a shrub 

 with erect stems and spreading branchlets at first pale 

 yellow-brown and conspicuously enlarged at the nodes, 

 and at the end of two or three years becoming dark gray 

 or grayish brown. The leaves are broadly ovate, rather 

 abruptly contracted into short points, entire, thin, light 

 green on the upper side, pale and glaucous on the lower, 

 from an inch to an inch and a quarter long and from three- 

 quarters of an inch to nearly an inch broad, with slender 

 pale midribs, few obscure primary veins connected by 

 conspicuously reticulate veinlets, and slender peduncles 

 enlarged and clasping at the base and about an eighth of 

 an inch long. The flowers, which appear as the leaves 

 begin to unfold toward the end of April, are solitary or in 

 pairs on slender nodding pedicels half an inch in length, 

 their bracts being as long, or rather longer, than the calyx, 

 which has a short nearly entire border ; the corolla is 

 white or pale straw-color, with a slightly gibbous tube 

 gradually enlarged into the spreading reflexed acute lobes, 



Plant Notes. 



Diervilla Japonica. — Many of the garden Weigelias bear 

 abundant flowers of good color, ranging from a dark 

 wine-color to pure white, but somehow the habit of these 

 shrubs is stiff, and they do not seem to mingle well with 

 other shrubs. In our last volume (see vol. ix., p. 405) we 

 figured Diervilla Japonica, which was raised from seed 

 gathered by Professor Sargent from wild plants in various 

 parts of central and northern Japan. It is a common shrub 

 by the banks of streams and along the borders of moun- 

 tain woods. Here well-grown individual plants reach a 

 height of fifteen feet and a diameter of from ten to twenty 

 feet. This species is the only one which Professor Sargent 

 saw, and he is inclined to believe that the three species of 

 Maximowicz must be reduced to this one, which varies 

 much in size in the pubescence of its leaves, in the number 

 of its flowers and the length of the peduncles of its flower- 

 clusters. It is from different types of this wild species, 

 perhaps, that all the garden forms have been derived. It 

 is easily propagated, and it has been flowering for three 

 weeks past in the Arnold Arboretum and along the Boston 

 parkways. Certainly it is a more graceful shrub than the 

 Weigelias of gardens as we know them, and it can be un- 

 hestatingly commended for park planting. The flower- 

 clusters are sometimes long-stalked, and sometimes nearly 

 sessile, and they are rose-colored, yellow, dark red or 

 nearly white on the same plant, since the flowers which are 

 very pale when they open turn darker as they fade. 



*Miquel, Versl. Med. Acad. WeUasch, ser. =, ii., 85 (1868) ; Prol.Fl Jap., 158 



Franchet & Savatier, Enuiu. PL Ja/>., i., -05. — Dippel, Handb. Laiddioh, i., 257, f. 170 

 (a sterile shoot only). — Koehne, Deutsche Dcndr., 545. 



Cultural Department. 



Cultivation of the Calochortus. 



'THE various species of Calochortus have been coming into 

 ■^ flower since early June, and now, at the end of the month, 

 are in their best form. These native plants seem to be much 

 neglected, though they are among the most distinctly and 

 beautifully flowered of bulbs. It is probable that many who 

 have ventured to grow them have been disappointed in re- 

 sults, for the cultural directions of catalogues are usually hazy 

 or else incorrect. They also often recommend cultivation in 

 frames, or other conditions which deter most growers from 

 attempting their cultivation. My experience with all the spe- 

 cies is that they are not tender nor at all difficult to flower in 

 this latitude in an ordinary garden border. I have tested them 

 for several years and sacrificed my first collection to satisfy 

 myself as to what they would or would not survive. One 

 should hesitate in offering any hard and fast rule for the culti- 

 vation of plants, for they can often be grown under widely 

 differing conditions. Calochortuses grow naturally in regions 

 rainless in summer, and where dormant plants waken into 

 growth in the fall under the influence of moisture, but not 

 necessarily of a high temperature. They are hardy here with- 

 out protection, but must be classed with those bulbous plants 

 whose foliage will not endure always the rigors of our winters. 

 The successful growth of such bulbs requires that, after being 

 thoroughly ripened in the early summer, they shall be kept 

 perfectly dormant so late in the year that no foliage can appear 

 above ground until early in the ensuing spring. The simplest 

 and safest procedure is to lift the bulbs after the ripening foliage 

 indicates dormancy and store them in dry earth in a warm 

 dry place, and plant out when the ground has lost its warmth, 

 which in this locality is in November. Under such treatment 

 they grow and flower well here, even in soil too hard to work 

 in dry weather, and with no other attention than that already 

 suggested. Of course, one does not plant bulbs in manured 

 soil or in soil rich in humus, which will hold water and 

 ferment to their injury. In the state of nature many bulbs 

 seek the depths evidently to escape detrimental surface humus, 

 a desire to shun bad company, which is not always shared by 

 human beings. Calochortus bulbs, if left in the ground here, 



