i 9 4 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 325. 



Examinations in Horticulture. — The Royal Horticultural 

 Society has taken a leaf out of the book of the Science and 

 Art Department and proposes to hold examinations in hor- 

 ticulture on May 1st next in " centres " all over the country. 

 Candidates will have to pay a small fee, they must be of a 

 limited age, and they will be examined in what is termed 

 elementary practical and scientific horticulture. They will 

 be awarded certificates if their answers are satisfactory, and 

 these certificates will, it is supposed, be of value to them 

 afterward in procuring situations. We have also a school 

 of horticulture at Swanley, which professes to teach all that 

 a man or woman (there is a woman's section) need know 

 to be able to manage a garden. Scholarships are awarded, 

 but no wages are paid. The fee for women is £70 a year. 

 In the prospectus it is stated that women who have been 

 trained at Swanley have afterward obtained head-garden- 

 ers' situations worth twenty-four shillings a week. 



English Forestry. — It is quite as easy for people to lose 

 their reason over forest-protection as over tree-spoliation. 

 While on the one side there is a general complaint that 

 there is'no good forest-management to be found anywhere 

 in Britain, on the other we have vigorous protestations 

 from what may be called thetrue protectionists against any 

 attempt to make our national woods and forests worthy 

 of a nation which professes to be practical. A great many 

 people have the same objection to cutting down an old 

 tree as they have to pole-axing old worn-out horses, and 

 they would sacrifice posterity to sentiment by allowing 

 every tree to stand till it crumbled through old age. If a 

 forester who understands his art sets about clearing away 

 worthless and decayed trees to make room for young and 

 healthy ones, he is sure to bring about his ears the protests 

 of the old women who "love old trees and cannot bear, 

 etc." It is hard up-hill work to teach either the masses or 

 the classes that the systematic cultivation of trees cannot 

 be managed without the use of axe and saw as well as 

 spade. 



Auriculas have a limited number of admirers, and those 

 few who are enthusiastic cultivators of them are looked 

 upon as men with odd tastes. This was made clear to me 

 last Tuesday when the National Auricula and Primula So- 

 ciety held its annual exhibition in London, and attracted a 

 great number of visitors, most of whom, however, were 

 evidently unable to find any attractions in many of the 

 choicest of the fanciers' exhibits. "Ugly green things"; 

 "those moldy plants," "queer-looking, not a bit like what 

 one expects and admires in a flower," — such were the ex- 

 pressions one heard from the uninitiated when looking 

 upon the precious gray-green or white-edged varieties 

 shown by such masters of the cult as the Rev. F. D. Hor- 

 ner, Mr. B. Simonite and Mr. Douglas. The self-colored 

 section came in for more admiration, as also, of course, 

 did the species of Primula, and especially the gaudy Poly- 

 anthuses. The plants generally were remarkable for ex- 

 ceptionally good foliage rather than for good, well-formed, 

 evenly marked flowers. On the whole the exhibition was 

 a success. 



Bougainvillea glabra Sanderiana. — A group of plants 

 bearing this name was exhibited by Messrs. F. Sander & 

 Co. at the last meeting of the Royal Horticultural Society, 

 and was awarded a first-class certificate on account of its 

 extraordinary floriferousness. Plants grown in four-inch 

 pots had stems a yard or so long wreathed from top to bot- 

 tom in bright rosy mauve flower-bracts. Both the type and 

 B. spectabilis are grand plants when in flower, but they do 

 not flower, under glass, at any rate, with that freedom 

 which is desirable. This is specially true of B. spectabilis, 

 the glory of most tropical gardens, but a disappointing 

 plant in a stove. It is flowering fairly well this year at 

 Kew, in consequence, no doubt, of the extra ripening it 

 got last summer, but, as a rule, it misses. B. glabra is not 

 quite so bad as this. But with this new variety I under- 

 stand that the difficulty is to get the plants to grow to any 

 size before they burst into bloom. 



Alocasia Watsoniana was awarded a first class certificate 

 by the Royal Horticultural Society this week, a fine speci- 

 men of it being exhibited by Messrs. F. Sander & Co., who 

 introduced it last year from Sumatra. It has irregular cor- 

 date leaf-blades nearly a yard long and a foot and a half 

 wide, on stalks three or four feet high ; the color of the 

 blade is deep violet-purple on the reverse side, the upper 

 surface being olive-green, shaded with purple. It is a very 

 handsome stove-plant Aroid, and is quite distinct from A. 

 Putzeysii, with which it was at first supposed to be identical. 

 Eurycles sylvestris is a handsome bulbous plant from 

 tropical Australia, and might be called the Old World 

 representative of Eucharis. It has large kidney-shaped 

 bright green leaves on long stalks and a tall stout scape 

 nearly two feet high bearing an umbel of about twenty 

 pure white flowers, nearly as large as those of Eucharis 

 grandiflora, and not unlike them in shape. Plants of it are 

 now in flower at Kew. It is an old garden-plant, but 

 rarely seen in cultivation now. 



Phaljenopsis tetraspis is now flowering freely at Kew, 

 and a plant of it was exhibited before the Royal Horticul- 

 tural Society last Tuesday, and received an award of merit. 

 It is evidently easily grown,' and flowers as freely as the 

 best of the species in cultivation, plants which when intro- 

 duced last year from the Andaman Islands to Kew were 

 quite small and weak, being now strong, healthy and in 

 flower. The flowers are like those of P. speciosa, but pure 

 waxy white, and fully two inches in diameter; the labellum 

 is thick, blunt and fleshy and covered with soft white hairs. 

 This species was first discovered by Thomas Lobb when 

 collecting for Messrs. Veitch, but it was not introduced till 

 1 88 1 , when Mr. Bull obtained living plants of it. SofarasI 

 know, it had never flowered in England till last year, when 

 several plants among a consignment received at Kew from 

 the Andamans, flowered, and a figure prepared from them 

 was published in the Botanical Magazine, t. 7321. I have 

 heard of a specimen showing twelve flowers on a scape. 



Ccelogyne Swaniana is a new Orchid in the way of C. Mas- 

 sangeana both in habit and flowers, the principal difference 

 being in the color of the latter, which have white sepals 

 and petals and a red-brown lip striped with pale yellow. 



LjELia cinnabarina is a very handsome Orchid when 

 grown and flowered well. Plants of it shown at the meet- 

 ing of the Royal Horticultural Society by Mr. Appleton, of 

 Weston-super-Mare, were so attractive that the committee 

 awarded them a first class certificate to call attention to the 

 merits of an Orchid which has been in cultivation over fifty 

 -years, but is still neglected. One of Mr. Appleton's plants 

 bore three spikes, one with ten, another with nine flowers, 

 and each flower was fully four inches across, and of the 

 brightest orange-scarlet color. Grown thus it is superior 

 to its ally, L. harpophylla. 



Rose Crimson Rambler attracted much attention last 

 Tuesday, Mr. Turner sending a large number of big plants 

 of it covered with flowers to the meeting of the Royal Hor- 

 ticultural Society. This Rose will become a universal 

 favorite on account of the bright color of its flowers and its 

 extraordinary free-growing, free-flowering nature. I have 

 told its history in previous letters. It is pre-eminently a 

 plant to be kept in mind by every one interested in good 

 hardy shrubs for the million. 



Carnation Uriah Pike is being largely exhibited and ad- 

 vertised in England as a Carnation which combines the 

 color, form and fragrance of the old-fashioned Clove Car- 

 nation with the grass and habit of the best of the Tree 

 Carnations. It is offered by Mr. James Pike, of South 

 Acton, London, who says of it: "It is a lovely crimson- 

 maroon in color, splendid habit, a vigorous grower and 

 most profuse bloomer, strong clove scented, and throwing 

 its perfect-formed flowers on long stems, which is an indis- 

 pensable quality ; the calyx does not split, and resists dis- 

 ease. Its lasting proclivities in a cut state are marvelous." 

 I saw a group of it last week, and can endorse most of what 



is here said of it. TrT TJ , 



London. W. Watson. 



