1 84 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 324. 



here. I anticipate immense popularity for this Lilium. It 

 is as hardy and good-natured, apparently, as any of the 

 L. umbellatum set. 



Rhododendron Luscombei. — -This hardy shrub I wish to 

 recommend strongly to any one who wants a first-rate 

 plant for the open border. With the habit of R. Thomsoni, 

 one of its parents (the other being R. Fortunei), and rich 

 rose-red campanulate flowers, each three inches across 

 and borne in elegant clusters, it is suggestive of R. Auck- 

 landii, to which R. Fortunei is closely allied. At Kew there 

 are several bushes of it which have been in flower since the 

 middle of March and are beautiful now. It was raised 

 about twenty years ago by the gentleman whose name it 

 bears. R. Fortunei is a species which has not beem made 

 as much use of by breeders of Rhododendrons as it might 

 be. It forms a handsome bush, has large bright foliage 

 and bears its large pale pink flowers with freedom. I have 

 never known it injured by frost at Kew. It is probably the 

 Chinese form of R. Aucklandii, the queen of the species 

 from the Himalayas. 



Fritillaria Meleagris. — The "Snake's-head," a native 

 of Britain, is one of the most delightful and effective of 

 spring-flowering bulbs when planted in mass in a bed on a 

 lawn. There are two such beds at Kew, ten feet in diam- 

 eter, and they are full of flowers of various colors, ranging 

 from purple to white and prettily tessellated or checkered. 

 The flowers began to open a month ago and they are still 

 in all their glory. We have another bed of a native weed, 

 a very common weed, in fact, the vulgar Dandelion, and 

 very effective it is, its fine dentate foliage being well de- 

 veloped in good soil, and its large heads of golden-yellow 

 flowers are as attractive as anything could be. The bed is 

 labeled simply Taraxacum officinale, and this is a source 

 of considerable confusion and doubt to many who, were 

 it not for the label, would recognize the weed of the way- 

 side ; but the label decides for them, and the verdict is "a 

 beautiful plant, like a Dandelion, but much better." 



Trees and shrubs which are hardy in England, flower in 

 spring, and whose flowers are ornamental enough to please 

 the popular eye, are receiving more than the usual amount 

 of notice this year. This is partly owing to the decision of 

 the Royal Horticultural Society to have a series of lectures 

 upon them by specialists, and to invite all exhibitors to 

 send to the fortnightly meetings examples of any worthy 

 of exhibition. Add to this the fact that last year's drought 

 and bright sunshine, followed by an exceptionally warm 

 and sunny spring, has had a wonderful effect upon the 

 floriferousness of hardy plants generally, and we have a 

 set of circumstances calculated to give an exceptional fillip 

 to the movement in favor of deciduous hardy trees and 

 shrubs for the English garden. And that they eminently 

 deserve it — indeed, that horticulture requires that they 

 should be brought into prominent notice — is seen in the 

 great variety and beauty they present in the few gardens 

 where at present they only appear to be grown. 



Kew is every year becoming less and less suitable for 

 the cultivation of delicate Conifers and all evergreens to 

 which smoke is distasteful ; but it is still well adapted for 

 deciduous trees and shrubs, which, after all, have a great 

 deal more to recommend them than have many Conifers. 

 It is, however, a case of " Hobson's choice." Conifers are 

 becoming hopeless in some parts of the garden, and so 

 other plants must be used instead. There is, fortunately, 

 a host of beautiful and interesting things which are quite 

 happy at Kew, and which have only to be shown in groups 

 and grown into character to make Kew more attractive 

 even than it is at present. Already the Rosacese, Legu- 

 minoseae, and other large groups which comprise so many 

 handsome flowered plants, have received special atten- 

 tion. At the present time (April 20th) there is a wealth of 

 bloom on the trees and shrubs outside which far exceeds 

 anything I have ever seen here, and which is attracting 

 as great crowds of visitors as are usually seen here 

 only in August. The most noteworthy of the hardy shrubs 

 now in flower at Kew are Exochorda q-randiflora, of which 



there are two large examples, one on a lawn where it forms 

 a handsome bush and is now fairly well in flower, but not 

 so well as the second specimen, which is trained against 

 an east wall and is laden with beautiful snow-white flowers. 

 Ceanothus rigidus, on the same wall, has been a picture of 

 blue for the last fortnight ; it is one of the best of the spe- 

 cies represented here. Neviusia Alabamensis, another hand- 

 some shrub from the southern United States, is grown 

 against a wall here and is now wreathed in flower. Ge- 

 nista prsecox, one of the best of the Brooms, a hybrid 

 between G. purgans and G. alba, is a grand picture, two 

 large beds of it in a conspicuous place on a lawn being 

 attractive from a considerable distance. Its one defect is 

 its powerful and rather fcetid odor. Kerria Japonica, both 

 the single and double-flowered forms, are globose bushes 

 of yellow, and varieties of Camellia Japonica are flowering 

 as I have never before seen them, and quite as well as 

 the specimens under glass. Rhododendron Rhodora is also 

 very fine this year, and Bryanthus erectus is as thickly laden 

 with its elegant rosy-pink flowers as the common heather. 

 Magnolias purpurea, Lennei, and, of course, M. conspicua 

 and its variety Soulangeana, are a great attraction — Water- 

 lily flowers the public name them. Tlr Trr 



London. W. WalSOtl. 



New or Little-known Plants. 



Prunus orthosepala. 



THE history of this plant, as I know it, is briefly this: 

 In June, 1880, Dr. George Engelmann, of St. Louis, 

 sent to the Arnold Arboretum a package of seeds marked 

 "Prunus, sp., southern Texas." Plants were raised from 

 these seeds, and in 1888, or earlier, they flowered and 

 produced fruit, which showed that they belonged to a dis- 

 tinct and probably undescribed species. A name, how- 

 ever, was not proposed for it, and, in 1888 probably, plants 

 or seeds were sent to Herr Spiith, of the Rixdorf Nurseries, 

 near Berlin, where this Plum was found in flower by Dr. 

 Emil Koehne, who has described it under the name of 

 Prunus orthose'pala. * 



Prunus orthosepala (see p. 187), as it grows in the Arbore- 

 tum, where it is perfectly hardy, is a densely branched, twiggy 

 shrub, four or five feet high and broad. The branchlets are 

 stout, slightly zigzag, marked with small pale lenticels, 

 bright reddish brown and rather lustrous during their first 

 season, growing darker during the winter, and finally be- 

 coming dark brown. The bark of the old stems, which are 

 sometimes armed with long, slender, straight spines, sep- 

 arates in large, loose, thick, plate-like scales. The winter 

 buds are obtuse and covered with closely imbricated scales, 

 those of the inner ranks being accrescent, variously three- 

 lobed at maturity, and marked at the apex with red. The 

 leaves are oblong-ovate, acuminate, long-pointed, un- 

 equally wedge-shaped or occasionally rounded at the 

 base, and coarsely serrate, with incurved, callous, or rarely 

 glandular-tipped, teeth ; they are puberulous on the lower 

 surface toward the base when they unfold, and at maturity 

 are thin and rather firm, glabrous, light green and lustrous 

 on the upper surface, pilose on the lower surface, two and 

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

 with slender pale midribs impressed on the upper side, re- 

 mote veins, forked and connected near the margins, fine 

 reticulate veinlets, and slender, slightly grooved, puberu- 

 lous petioles furnished near their apex with one or two 

 large glands, and half an inch in length. The flowers, 

 which appear at the end of May, when the leaves are 

 about one-third grown, are produced in three or four flow- 

 ered clustered fascicles, on stout pedicels half an inch long. 

 The calyx-tube is green, turbinate, and about as long as the 

 narrow acute lobes, which are puberulous on the outer sur- 

 face, ciliate on the margins, coated on the inner surface 

 with thick pale tomentum, and often tipped with red. The 

 petals are narrowly obovate, roundedatthe apex, narrowed 

 at the base into slender claws, thin and white, or white 



* Dmtsche Dendroiogie, 311 (1893). 



