254 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 331. 



Foreign Correspondence. 



London Letter. 



Cyrtanthus O'Brieni. — This is a new species named by 

 Mr. Baker in compliment to Mr. James O'Brien, of Harrow, 

 who recently introduced it from Natal, and who has done 

 much to restore many of the beautiful, but now neglected 

 bulbous plants of South Africa to the favored position in 

 English horticulture which they held fifty years or more 

 ago. The genus Cyrtanthus is an interesting one, all the 

 species being pretty in flower, and their only drawback is 

 the difficulty experienced in keeping them in good health 

 in cultivation. There are, however, a few species which 

 are as easy to manage as Lachenalias, and C. O'Brieni is 

 one of them. It is near C. angustifolius and C. MacOwani, 

 and these are near the common C. McKenii and C. lutescens. 

 The new one bears tubular, bright, pale scarlet flowers in 

 umbels of five to eight on slender scapes about a foot long. 

 The leaves are linear and like those of C. McKenii. 



Licuala grandis. — This is a handsome Fan-palm, which 

 was introduced about twenty-five years ago from the Solo- 

 mon Islands by Mr. W. Bull, the Chelsea nurseryman, and 

 distributed by him under the name of Pritchardia grandis. 

 A large specimen of it was for some years a striking object 

 in the Palm-house at Kew, where it flowered a few years 

 ago, and was figured in the Botanical Magazine. The 

 habitat of L. grandis is a very restricted one, and hitherto 

 it has not been possible to obtain seeds of it in quantity. 

 Two years ago, however, about fifty good seeds were re- 

 ceived at Kew, and from these some good plants were 

 raised, and I see from an advertisement that a quantity of 

 fresh seeds have lately been procured. The distinct and 

 elegant form of the leaves of L. grandis and its good be- 

 havior under ordinary stove treatment are sure to make it 

 popular everywhere with growers of Palms. 



Nepenthes Rajah is a most difficult plant to manage. Pos- 

 sibly some American grower of these plants who has suc- 

 ceeded with N. Rajah can give us a few helpful suggestions. 

 The only plant I have seen that may be called healthy and 

 a success is in the Glasnevin collection, where Mr. Moore 

 grows it with his Masdevallias. I saw the plant last year 

 after it had been with the Masdevallias four years ; it was 

 nearly two feet high, well leaved, every leaf bearing a 

 pitcher, and the leaves in some cases five inches wide. 

 The pitchers, however, were small, nothing like as large as 

 "quart-jugs," as they are reputed to be on the wild plants 

 on the mountains of Borneo. A cool-house Nepenthes is 

 as much an anomaly as a cool-house ^Lschynanthus, 

 which, however, we now possess, the JE. Hildebrandii, 

 noted by me a few weeks ago, being, according to Mr. 

 Hildebrand, a turf-like mass of short stems, studded all 

 over with scarlet flowers clinging to the thick tree-trunks 

 in the frost region of the Shan states, in upper Burma. 



Sauromatums. — A border filled with several species of 

 Sauromatum is an object of exceptional attraction and 

 interest at this time of year. It is on the south side of a 

 tropical-plant house, from which, probably, it gets a little 

 warmth in winter; otherwise it is exposed to the weather, 

 summer and winter. The tubers are buried six inches 

 below the surface, and from these there spring in May or 

 June the singular flowers, at first a straight green rod a 

 foot long, which gradually unrolls and reveals a long 

 fleshy purple spadix, which curves over till its tip touches 

 the ground ; the spathe is strap-shaped, curled, a foot long, 

 green outside, greenish-yellow with purple blotches in- 

 side. As to the odor — well, we will hold our nostrils and 

 say nothing about that. After the flowers, come the hand- 

 some pedate leaves on tall spotted snake-like stalks. These 

 die down in autumn and are succeeded by cone-like clus- 

 ters of crimson-purple fruits pushed up just above the soil. 

 The species thus grown are S. guttatum, S. punctatum and 

 S. pedatum. They are all Himalayan. 



Rubus deliciosus. — This Rocky Mountain bramble is 

 probably a common garden-plant in the United States, but 

 in England it is scarcely known, notwithstanding its hardi- 



ness, the beauty of flowers, its free growth and the early 

 date of its introduction — 1822. Planted in groups on the 

 border of a shrubbery, or in a bed on a lawn, it soon forms 

 an ornamental mass of Raspberry-like stems, which, in 

 early summer, are clothed with pure white rose-like flow- 

 ers two.inches in diameter. It is the most ornamental of 

 all the species of Rubus known in cultivation here, and if 

 not appreciated in America as a garden-plant it ought to 

 be. At Kew it used to be grown in poor soil from a belief 

 that rich treatment was bad for it, but a group of it, raised 

 from layers two years ago, now fills a space of about forty 

 square yards, having grown rapidly in the rich loam in 

 in which it is planted, and the canes, some of them seven 

 feet long, are wreathed in flowers. 



The Advertisement Plague — an American invention, I 

 believe — has grown and spread so rapidly in England 

 within the last few years, to the defacement of country 

 and sea-side scenery (we have grown used to it in towns), 

 that efforts are about to be made to put a stop to it by act 

 of Parliament. The Prime Minister lately expressed, what 

 every one who travels by rail in England must feel, alarm 

 at the number of large, ugly boards that are set up often in 

 the most conspicuous places in the landscape, and which 

 not only destroy the most picturesque scenery, but also 

 keep one constantly in mind of his liver or stomach. One 

 cannot, nowadays, take a run into the country without 

 being reminded twenty times on the way of his ailments 

 by these glaring advertisements. The advertiser has de- 

 faced all the station walls, the hoardings and gable ends 

 of town buildings, and now he is spreading himself all 

 over our fields and woods. 



Enelish forests are at last receiving; the attention for 

 which they have been crying out for many years. Their 

 condition is being looked into and the work done in them 

 criticised — foolishly as a rule, it is true, still adverse criticism 

 is better than no notice at all. Sir John Lubbock has recently 

 recommended that the Government ought to take the mat- 

 ter up and preserve such forests as we boast of. What we 

 in England call forests are, of course, very different from 

 what you call by that name. Ours are large areas given 

 up entirely to arboreal vegetation, and not with any view 

 to the production of good timber. Such are the Epping 

 Forest, which has been called the playground for the in- 

 habitants of East London, and the New Forest, in Hamp- 

 shire. But the trees in these will wear out in time, and 

 what is needed is judicious thinning, the removal of worn- 

 out trees and the planting of new ones. Our forests and 

 woods are too precious to be allowed to run to waste with- 

 out protest. 



Indoor Gardening. — The cultivation of plants which re- 

 quire to be kept in glass houses is, I believe, on the 

 decline, in England at any rate. Gardening has made 

 enormous strides within the last twenty years, but, if we 

 except Orchids, it has been only with open-air gardening. 

 Even the Orchid fever is cooling, so far as tropical species 

 are concerned, the demand now being for those sorts 

 which can be grown in a cool house. The discomfort of 

 the plant-stove is too much for most people. Fruit must 

 be grown, and we shall always have forced grapes, cu- 

 cumbers, melons, pineapples, etc., but plants which merely 

 please the eye are certain to decline in favor if they cannot 

 be grown without stove-heat. No doubt, the fault is partly 

 in the crude and unattractive methods adopted for indoor 

 gardening ; the pipes, the ugly stages, the flower-pots, the 

 formal arrangement, all so artificial and inartistic. Reform 

 is needed if we are not to give up tropical gardening alto- 

 gether. In those houses where the plants are planted in 

 borders, where few or no flower-pots are used, the effect is 

 better and the plants are often healthier. English outdoor 

 gardening has improved because it has been largely re- 

 modeled and everything formal and ugly has been 

 removed. Our borders of hardy flowers, rock-gardens, 

 groups of shrubs and trees, beds only when they can 

 be made to have a natural or artistic effect — these are 

 in the right direction. But the ordinary plant-house is, it 



