74 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 



grow, either in pots for the conservatory or in the open 

 border. Several of them have been in flower a week or 

 more outside at Kew, but the most charming- of all, so far, 

 is I. Bakeriana, as represented by a potful grown in full 

 blow in the Alpine-house along with rare Snowdrops, Cro- 

 cuses, tufted Saxifrages, etc. The Iris is exactly like I. re- 

 ticulata ; indeed, is in my opinion only a variety of it. The 

 flowers, which are on erect scapes six inches high, are of 

 the most charming satiny blue color, and the lip-like claw 

 is colored rich violet-blue. Flowering in January, lasting 

 over a fortnight and being delightfully fragrant, this is an 

 Iris of special value. It was introduced from Armenia in 

 18S9, and was namedby Professor Foster in compliment to 

 Mr. J. G. Baker, F.R.S., of Kew. 



Narcissus Trimon. — This is an interesting and pretty hy- 

 brid between N. triandrus and N. monophyllus, which was 

 raised by Professor Michael Foster in 1890. It possesses 

 all the charm of both of its parents, and is an improvement 

 upon N. monophyllus in its sturdier constitution. Plants of 

 it are now in flower in the alpine-house at Kew. The leaves 

 are Rush-like, and the scapes are nine inches long, usually 

 two-flowered, each flower being two inches across ; the seg- 

 ments an inch long, spreading, and the cup two-thirds of 

 an inch deep, with an even edge. The whole flower is 

 milk-white. In the same house there are examples in 

 flower of N. monophyllus, a delightful little Daffodil, with 

 its delicate snow-white flowers, with orange anthers. Pro- 

 fessor Foster's name for his hybrid is an attempt to indicate 

 the parentage by combining the first syllable of each name. 

 In my opinion, the plant deserved a prettier name. 



Darwin Tulips. — English horticultural papers are actively 

 discussing these plants just now, some of them holding that 

 the "race" recently named in compliment to the great 

 naturalist, and offered by Messrs. Krelage & Sons, of Haar- 

 lem, is not in any way distinct from the old " Breeder " 

 Tulips, which are forms of T. Gesneriana. In my opinion, 

 there is a difference, the plants offered by Messrs. Krelage 

 being much superior in color attractions to the "Breeders" 

 of English gardens. The former have been grown at Kew 

 several years now, and their extraordinary colors attract 

 considerable attention. No less an authority than Sir 

 Frederick Leighton, on seeing them at Kew two years ago, 

 expressed himself delighted with them because they were 

 so different from and so much more artistic in color than 

 the Tulips usually grown in gardens. If the quibbling over 

 the name only leads to the general cultivation of these 

 Darwin Tulips it will have been productive of some good. 

 I would rather call them Darwin than Breeder Tulips, even 

 if they were identical, the latter name suggesting some- 

 thing unfinished or imperfect, whereas the flowers them- 

 selves are beautiful in their colors, kaleidoscopic, never 

 harsh or disagreeable to the eye, and often showing the 

 most subtle blending of browns and purples and greens ; 

 in short, all colors. Breeder Tulips have never held a very 

 prominent place in English horticulture, not within the last 

 twenty years, at any rate ; but, unless I am much mis- 

 taken, these Darwin Tulips of Messrs. Krelage are certain 

 to become favorites with all who love true beauty of colors 

 in a flower. It appears as if T. Gesneriana has been as 

 prolific in variety as Hyacinthus orientalis, the parent of all 

 garden Hyacinths, or Pelargonium zonale, whose progeny 

 is the garden Geranium in its hundreds of varieties. 



Petasites fragrans. — An excellent use for this plant is as 

 scent-maker in the conservatory or greenhouse. In Eng- 

 land it is wild, though not a native, and it is not uncom- 

 mon in gardens, where it is known as Winter Heliotrope, 

 flowering in December and January in ordinary winters. 

 Some tufts of it should be included in every conservatory 

 for the sake of its powerful and agreeable odor. In the 

 border outside it is apt to become a weed and choke out 

 everything else, but in a conservatory it is weaker and 

 therefore easily kept within bounds. In the alpine-house 

 at Kew several tufts of it are planted under the stage, where 

 they are now in flower. The foliage is handsome, and the 

 racemes are nine inches high, branched, and crowded with 



heads of whitish flowers with purple anthers. It is also a 



good plant for the margins of streams. It is worth a trial 



in the conservatory, and even might be grown for the sake 



of its flowers for cutting purposes. The)' are white in the 



greenhouse. 

 London. W. II atson. 



New or Little-known Plants. 



Darbya umbellata. 



THE Sandal-wood family, which is chiefly tropical, 

 appears in the eastern United States with half-a- 

 dozen species of plants, in four genera. Of these, Coman- 

 dra, small parasitic herbs, is common at the north with 

 three species, and Pyrularia, the Oil Nut, which is also 

 represented in the Himalaya forest, is a common shrub in 

 the southern Alleghany Mountain region. Buckleya, the 

 third genus, has one representative in North America, one 

 of the rarest of all American plants (see Garden and Forest, 

 vol. iii., p. 237), and another in the mountain forests of cen- 

 tral Hondo, in Japan. The fourth genus, Darbya, is 

 monotypic, and, although it was discovered more than 

 fifty years ago, it is only recently that the discovery of 

 the pistillate plant and of ripe fruit has made it possible to 

 complete the description of its characters. 



Darbya is a glabrous shrub, with slender, terete or 

 quadrangular dark-brown branchlets, often roughened 

 with dark lenticels, long, thick stoloniferous roots, and 

 deciduous leaves without stipules. The leaves are ovate, 

 narrowed at both ends, reticulate-venulose, entire, with 

 slightly revolute margins, thin and membranous, dark- 

 green on the upper surface, pale on the lower surface, an 

 inch and a half to two inches long, and three-quarters of an 

 inch to an inch wide on the fertile plant, or not more than 

 half as large on the sterile plant, with slender, pale mid- 

 ribs, remote oblique veins forked near the margins, and 

 short stout petioles. The staminate and pistillate flowers 

 are greenish-white, apetalous, and produced on separate 

 individuals from the axils of leaves of the year, the former 

 on slender pedicels in five or six-flowered pedunculate 

 umbels, the peduncles nearly as long as the leaves, the 

 latter, solitary and articulate on short stout peduncles. 

 The calyx is usually four, sometimes three or five, lobed, 

 and slightly puberulous on the outer surface of the short, 

 thick acute lobes which are valvate in the bud, and after 

 anthesis are spreading and reflexed; it is turbinate in the 

 staminate flower, and nearly twice as long and cylindrical 

 in the pistillate flower, and is lined with a thick, cup- 

 shaped, slightly lobed disk, on the margin of which and 

 on the lobes are inserted, opposite the divisions of the 

 calyx, the four, or sometimes three or five, introrse, slightly 

 exserted stamens, with short, stout, flattened filaments 

 furnished at the base, on the outer side, with small tufts of 

 pale hairs, and oblong anthers attached on the back below 

 the middle, and two-celled, the cells opening by longitudi- 

 nal slits. In the pistillate flower the stamens are rather 

 smaller, included, and apparently fertile. The ovary is 

 inferior and abruptly narrowed into a short, exserted, 

 thick, conical style, tipped with a four-lobed spreading 

 stigma; before fertilization, the 'cell and its ovaries are not 

 distinguishable, the whole of the flower below the disk 

 consisting of a homogeneous pulpy mass ; in the sterile 

 flower there is no trace of an ovary, the cavity of the disk 

 extending to the bottom of the calyx. The fruit is a nearly 

 globose drupe, crowned with the remnants of the calyx- 

 limb, with thin, dry, mealy flesh, a thin-shelled light brown 

 nutlet, and a globose seed, covered with a thin mem- 

 branous scurfy testa closely investing the large mass of 

 fleshy albumen. The embryo is axile and erect, with 

 linear cotyledons much longer than the short erect radicle 

 turned toward the hilum. 



Darbya, of which only one species is known, Darbya 

 umbellata, was established by Dr. Asa Gray, who character- 

 ized the staminate plant only in the America?!. Journal 0/ 

 Science in 1846 (ser. 2, i., 3S8). It had been found a few 



