264 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 332. 



named varieties of this Orchid, and they continue to come, 

 no less than four new ones being certificated last Tuesday. 

 The names of some of them, however, call for comment. 

 Surely it is possible to give complimentary names without 

 adding a string of Christian names like the following : 

 Odontoglossum crispum, var. Miss Florence May Bovill, 

 and O. crispum, var. Mademoiselle Cecile de Rochfort. If 

 this kind of thing goes on, garden nomenclature will be- 

 come ridiculous. I am heathen enough to not care to hear 

 the whole string of names that some lady's godparents 

 gave her rattled off when I want to know the distinctive 

 name of an Orchid. Complimentary names are becoming 

 a nuisance. Another newly certificated plant was named 

 Odontoglossum luteo-purpureum sceptrum leopardinum ! 



Cypripedium Sargentianum, which was introduced last 

 year by Messrs. F. Sander & Co., was shown in flower last 

 Tuesday. It is one of the Seienipediums and comes very 

 near S. Lindleyanum. It has long strap-shaped, bright 

 green leaves and tall scapes bearing greenish-yellow flow- 

 ers with red-brown lines and blotches. 



Houlletia Lansbergii. — This was shown with an erect 

 scape of creamy yellow flowers, by Messrs. H. Low & Co., 

 who also sent a collection of varieties of Cypripedium bel- 

 latulum showing considerable range of color-tints. 



Phajus Owenianus. — This beautiful hybrid, raised by 

 Messrs. F. Sander & Co., was shown by them. I noted 

 and briefly described this plant in my letter on the Temple 

 Show, a few weeks ago. Last Tuesday it won the premier 

 award for the best new hybrid Orchid of 1894. The same 

 firm sent fine examples of the now rare but exceedingly 

 beautiful Zygopetalum Klabochorum and Z. Piscatorei, 

 plants which would find a great deal more favor if they 

 were less difficult to cultivate. 



Certificates were awarded to the following, and, although 

 none is new, they are all first-rate plants which deserve to 

 be better known : 



Aris/ema fimbriata, one of the prettiest of the Malayan 

 species. It has a large hooded spathe, white, with purple 

 lines, and a long drooping spadix, remarkable in being 

 clothed with long, fleshy, bristle-like hairs. The leaves are 

 trifoliate and rich green. This species requires tropical 

 treatment, thriving well with Caladiums, whereas A. specio- 

 sum and the Himalayan species generally do best in a 

 greenhouse. A. pra?cox, the Japanese species, is nearly 

 hardy here. It is a useful plant for a bed in a cool con- 

 servatory. 



Pteris ludens. — This is one of the most striking of that 

 group of the genus represented by P. sagittata. It has 

 broad deep green fronds a foot across at the base, and is 

 one of the best Ferns introduced by Mr. Bull. It has been 

 in cultivation many years, but has only now received a 

 certificate. 



Osmunda javanica is a handsome greenhouse Fern with 

 erect, bipinnate, rich green fronds, which has been in cul- 

 tivation at Kew for the last twenty years, and is used to 

 mix with flowering plants in the conservatory. 



Lygodium dichotomum polydactylon is a pretty variety of 

 one of the best of the Lygodiums which are grown up pil- 

 lars, etc., in tropical stoves. It differs from the type in 

 having the pinnae elegantly cut into several divisions. It 

 worthily received a first-class certificate. 



Sarracenia Willisi is a hybrid between S. melanorrhoda 

 and S. Courtii, both of which are of hybrid origin. It is a 

 handsome free-growing plant with pitchers about a foot 

 long, at first green, ripening to rich reddish brown. 



Fagus rotundifolia is a pyramidal Beech, probably only 

 a form of F. sylvatica, with very small, round, bright 

 green leaves. It was shown by Mr. Jackman, of Woking, 

 and obtained a first-class certificate. 



Widdringtonia Whytei. — This is a new Conifer which 

 has lately been introduced from Nyassaland to Kew by 

 means of seeds brought home by Mr. Whyte, who col- 

 lected specimens of animals and plants in that region in 

 189 r for the British Museum. The seedlings are now six 

 inches high, and from their behavior (hey are likely to do 



well under cultivation. The genus is closely related to 

 Callitris, also African, and of which several species are in 

 cultivation. W. Whytei is, according to Mr. Whyte, a large 

 tree, specimens measured by him being 140 feet long, with 

 a clear straight stem ninety feet long and nearly six feet in 

 diameter at the base. The cones are smaller than a chest- 

 nut, and of the same shape — longer than broad. The 

 foliage is Juniper-lrke, and the wood is dull reddish white. 

 There were forests of this Widdringtonia at high eleva- 

 tions on Mount Milanji, an account of whose plants is 

 published in vol. iv. of the Transactions of the Linncean 

 Society. 



Omar Khayyam's Rose. — A Rose now in flower at Kew, 

 and which was raised from seeds sown ten years ago, has 

 excited considerable interest on account of its doubtful 

 identity with any Rose in cultivation, and also from the 

 fact that it was the child of a tree found growing on the 

 grave of Omar Khayyam, the Persian poet, who lived in 

 the eleventh century, and who, when he died, "desired 

 that his grave might be where the wind would scatter rose- 

 leaves over it." Mr. Baker now identifies the Rose as a 

 form of R. centifolia, the sweetest of all Roses, and the 

 parent of our Moss and Cabbage Roses. The seeds were 

 brought to England by Mr. William Simpson, who gathered 

 them while on a sketching tour in Persia on behalf of the 

 Illustrated London Navs. How long the original bush has 

 been on the poet's grave is not known, but its flowers are 

 double and rose-pink in color. 



London. 



W. Watson. 



Plant Notes. 

 Passiflora manicata. 



TO a person from the eastern states visiting for the first 

 time the gardens of Santa Barbara, California, no 

 other plant appears more striking and remarkable than the 

 red-flowered Passion-vine, which may be often seen climb- 

 ing into the tops of the tallest Eucalypti — that is, to the 

 height of fully a hundred feet — or draping arbors and out- 

 buildings with masses of its dark green foliage thickly 

 studded in the spring with the deep scarlet flowers. 



This magnificent plant is the Passiflora manicata of bot- 

 anists, and a native of Peru, where it was discovered by 

 Humboldt nearly a century ago, and of the Andes of 

 Ecuador and New Granada. More than fifty years ago it 

 was introduced into the gardens of Europe by the German 

 collector Hartweg, who found it growing in hedges in the 

 neighborhood of the city of Loxa. 



Difficult to manage and shy of displaying its beautiful 

 flowers in northern greenhouses, Passiflora manicata long 

 ago made itself at home in the gardens of the Riviera, as it 

 has in those of Santa Barbara, where it grows with aston- 

 ishing vigor and rapidity, although individual plants are 

 inclined to be short-lived — a matter of comparatively little 

 importance, perhaps, as seeds are produced in profusion 

 and young plants grow so fast that at the end of two or 

 three years they have usually outgrown their quarters. 



Passiflora manicata produces nearly terete branches 

 clothed, like the petioles, the under surface of the leaves, 

 the stipules, bracts and exterior of the perianth, with soft 

 pale pubescence. The leaves are thick and firm, three- 

 lobed to about the middle, finely serrate, dark green on the 

 upper and pale on the lower surface, and are borne on stout 

 petioles an inch in length, and marked with three or four 

 dark glands ; the stipules are an inch in diameter, ovate, 

 deeply toothed, concave and clasping. The rigid pedun- 

 cles are about two inches long, raising the flowers well 

 above the foliage. The bracts at the base of the flower are 

 ovate, acute, serrate, membranaceous and free or united 

 from the base upward to the middle. The tube of the 

 flower is about half an inch long, and inflated and ten- 

 lobed at the base; the limb is three to four inches in 

 diameter, bright scarlet, with a double crown, the outer at 

 the mouth of the tube composed of numerous rows of dark 

 blue hairs, the inner at the top of the inflated base of the 



