4H 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 504. 



densely tufted, glabrous, most graceful grass. Culms reed- 

 like two to five feet high. Panicle eight to sixteen inches 

 long." It is a native of Northern Island, in New Zealand, 

 and is also found in subtropical east Australia. The genus 

 is closely related to Stipa. 



Megacaryon orientale. — A figure of this new garden 

 plant is given in The Gardeners Chronicle this week, where 

 it is described as a remarkable Boraginaceous plant, closely 

 allied to Echium, from which it differs chiefly in the smooth, 

 ovoid, not tubercled carpels. It forms a tall coarsely hairy 

 plant with large-spreading oblong-lanceolate basal leaves, 

 and a central leafy flower-scape four feet high bearing 

 numerous flowers in a loosely-branched pyramidal cyme, 

 as in some of the species of Echium from the Canary 

 Islands ; for instance, E. candicans. The flowers are 

 about an inch long and as wide, with a five-lobed limb, 

 colored pink with purplish streaks. The genus is mono- 

 typic and is a native of Turkish Armenia. It has lately 

 flowered in the garden of Mr. W. B. Boyd, Melrose, who 

 obtained it six years ago, and it has been growing ever 

 since in a rockery border in rather heavy loam. It is a 

 stately plant for the herbaceous border. 



Crassula Coopeei. — This dwarf species has small fleshy 

 leaves which become tinged with purplish crimson under 

 the influence of bright sunshine. In the autumn it flowers 

 freely, and the bright rose-red of its cymes of tubular flow- 

 ers are an additional attraction. It may be grown for 

 carpet-bedding or for the rockery in the same way as 

 Sedum Acre, Mesembryanthemum cordatum and Alter- 

 nantheras, and requires the same treatment as these. It is 

 a native of south Africa, and has been in cultivation about 

 thirty years, but it has only lately attracted the notice of 

 horticulturists. Messrs. G. Paul & Sons, Qheshunt, exhib- 

 ited a basket of this plant at the last meeting of the Royal 

 Horticultural Society, when it was favorably noticed. It 

 is as easily multiplied as Sedum Acre. 



Asclepias Curassavica. — This plant is occasionally grown 

 for its decorative character. It is also known as False 

 Ipecacuanha, and is said to be used in the West Indies as 

 an emetic. According to the following note, recently pub- 

 lished in the Keiv Bulletin, it has another and still greater 

 value as an insectifuge : " Miss Manning would be greatly 

 obliged if the Director would tell her what the enclosed 

 plant is. It grows everywhere, as a weed, about the 

 Isthmus of Tehuantepec (southern Mexico), and is used by 

 the Indians there to keep away vermin, especially fleas. 

 Miss Manning's friends in Mexico have tried it, and 

 found it most successful. They make a rough broom of it 

 and sweep the floors and walls of their huts, and find that 

 they are not troubled with fleas for a considerable time 

 afterward. They have tried brushing dogs with it when 

 their coats are full of vermin, and it appears to answer the 

 same purpose with them. The Indian name of the plant 

 is Chilpati." The plant sent was unquestionably this 

 Asclepias. Possibly it is known as an insectifuge to some 

 of the readers of Garden and Forest. 



Exhibition of Fruit. — The great annual exhibition of 

 British-grown fruits arranged by the Royal Horticultural 

 Society was again held this week at the Crystal Palace. 

 Considering that the year has not been a good one for 

 fruit, the display in every class was of surprising excel- 

 lence. It is difficult for those who do not understand how 

 such exhibitions are made and the special conditions under 

 which, as a rule, the fruit shown is produced, to believe 

 the reports from nearly all parts of the country of poor 

 crops and inferior quality. The tables at the Crystal 

 Palace literally groaned under the piles of superb apples, 

 pears, grapes, peaches, plums, cherries, etc., shown as 

 British produce. As The Gardeners Chronicle remarks, it 

 is a grand advertisement, and one that is needed to teach 

 the populace what first-rate English-grown fruit is. Whether 

 the populace would care to pay the price such fruit would 

 have to realize to make it profitable is another question. 



London. W. WatSOn. 



Cultural Department. 



A Lily-bulb Disease. 



N a full account of the disease which last year attacked 

 the bulbs of Lilies in Japan, Mr. G. Massee recently 

 stated the following facts in the Kew Bulletin : 



During the year 1896 a destructive wave of fungoid disease 

 almost completely ruined the crop of Lily-bulbs grown in 

 Japan for exportation to Europe. The first indication of this 

 disease received at Kew was through a London dealer, who 

 sent a large number of diseased bulbs for examination. These 

 bulbs formed part of a consignment received Jrom Japan in 

 November last, consisting of 848 cases, containing 73,050 bulbs 

 of Lilium speciosum, of the varieties album and rubrum. Out 

 of this number only 250 bulbs arrived inasalable condition, the 

 whole of the remainder being more or less rotten and worth- 

 less. At a later date the same firm received a second consign- 

 ment of 37,590 very large bulbs of Lilium auratum, and of 

 this quantity only 4,000 were salable. Similarly diseased bulbs, 

 received from Japan, were afterward sent to Kew for exami- 

 nation from oilier sources. Finally, a quantity of bulbs 

 obtained through an agent from Japan, for planting at Kew, 

 contained a large percentage suffering from the same type of 

 disease. 



The bulbs received for investigation showed every stage of 

 disease ; in the earliest condition the base of the bulb is alone 

 discolored and somewhat soft ; this discoloration and soften- 

 ing of the tissues gradually spreads from the base, until finally, 

 in the most advanced stage, every part of the bulb is of a 

 brownish color, and sufficiently soft to admit of being readily 

 crushed into a pulpy mass between the fingers. 



Microscopic examination revealed the presence of slender, 

 continuous, hyaline, branched hyphae traversing the tissues in 

 every direction ; the cell-walls are never pierced, but gradu- 

 ally dissolved, and it is only at the last stage of the disease that 

 the starch grains become irregularly corroded and gradually 

 dissolved. So long as the epidermis of the bulb-scales remains 

 intact there is no trace of mycelium or fructification on the 

 surface, but when the tissue is reduced to a soft pulp, or when 

 a diseased bulb is cut open, the broken surface is within 

 twenty-four hours covered with a dense snow-white mycelium, 

 which within three days becomes studded with numerous 

 clusters of fruit, resembling to the naked eye miniature pins 

 wilh round black heads. The occurrence of this particular 

 form of fungus on every bulb examined suggested that it 

 might possibly be in some way associated with the disease, and 

 subsequent cultures and inoculations proved this surmise to 

 be correct. The fungus grows readily as a saprophyte ; the 

 spores germinating and forming the characteristic superficial 

 white floccose mycelium, which within a week bears an abun- 

 dance of fruit, on such varied culture media as prune juice, 

 sterilized potato, decoction of bulb scales, etc. In one experi- 

 ment four spores were sown in a five per cent solution of 

 cane sugar in water in a Petri dish, and at the end of six days 

 the entire surface of the liquid was covered with the fungus 

 in a fruiting condition. When spores were sown in a hang- 

 ing-drop alone with a very thin section of Lily-bulb scale, it 

 was observed that the germ-tubes could not enter the tissue 

 through the epidermis, but that they entered readily at those 

 points where the cells were not protected by the epidermis. 



A set of experiments was also carried out, using healthy 

 Lily-bulbs. Numerous experiments were made with other 

 kinds of bulbs, and it was found that the fungus refused to 

 grow on onions, however much mutilated. On the other 

 hand, Daffodil-bulbs were very susceptible to the disease; if 

 the roots were broken, or a wound made in the bulb, and after- 

 ward powdered with the spores, the disease showed itself 

 within a few days, and was in due course followed by the char- 

 acteristic fruit of the fungus, ft was invariably found that, how- 

 ever much bulbs were mutilated, and then inoculated with 

 fungus spores, submergence for a few minutes in a one per 

 cent solution of salicylic acid or corrosive sublimate pre- 

 vented the disease ; in other words, all fungus spores coming 

 in contact with the above-named solutions are destroyed, 

 whereas the vitality of the bulbs thus treated is not at all 

 affected. 



Dr. Halsted has described a somewhat similar disease, called 

 "soft-rot," as attacking the Sweet Potato in the United States. 

 The fungus causing this disease, Rhizopus nigricans, Ehrh., is 

 closely allied to the species under consideration causing the 

 Lily-bulb disease. 



In a summary Mr. Massee concludes that the Lily-bulb 

 disease is caused by a parasitic fungus called Rhizopus necans ; 



