274 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 333. 



eign periodicals. A reference is given under each plant to 

 the publications from which the list was compiled, and 

 this is followed by a brief description of the plant, sufficient 

 for ordinary purposes, with the name of the person in 

 whose collection the plant was first noticed. It is intended 

 to rearrange these lists in decennial parts. Botanists as 

 well as horticulturists must find such a sweeping together 

 of scattered references and descriptions of considerable 

 usefulness. 



Lathyrus splendens. — We are anxious to know more 

 about this plant. I have- seen several references to it in 

 Garden and Forest, but never saw flowers of it till to-day, 

 when a correspondent in the Isle of Wight sends it for 

 name. What a gorgeous thing it is ! the flowers as fine 

 and effective as the flowers of Erythrina crista-galli. Is it 

 hardy in the northern states, and is it successfully grown 

 in gardens in America ? I see Mr. Orcutt, in Garden and 

 Forest, calls it the Pride of California and says it likes 

 plenty of heat. Mr. Kellogg's description of it as a peren- 

 nial climbing vine which creeps over bushes, and when in 

 flower presents the illusion of a grand flowering shrub, 

 whets the desire for it. I cannot understand how so beau- 

 tiful a plant, which was discovered in southern California 

 seventeen years ago and evidently has been cultivated in 

 American gardens a dozen years at least, should have 

 remained unknown to us here till now. 



Primula imperialis is still with us, a fine specimen of it 

 being now in flower in a cold greenhouse at Kew. It will 

 be remembered that this species first flowered at Kew in 

 1891 after many attempts to introduce it from its alpine 

 home in Java, where Wallace saw it thirty years ago with 

 flower-stems three feet high and leaves eighteen inches 

 long. Until it was grown and flowered at Kew, side by 

 side with the Himalayan P. prolifera, the wide difference 

 between these two, which had been previously united as 

 one species, was not fully recognized. The "Royal Prim- 

 rose," as Mr. Wallace calls it, is a glorified P. Japonica with 

 orange-yellow flowers. I believe Messieurs Lemoine & 

 Son, of Nancy, possess a stock of it. I may warn cultivators 

 who wish to succeed with this species that it cannot bear 

 bright sunlight — a moist, partially shaded, cool-in-summer 

 position being what it prefers. It also likes rich loamy 

 soil and plenty of water. 



Phormium Hookeri. — This plant is now flowering for the 

 first time at Kew. It has dark-green flaccid leaves six feet 

 long and nearly three inches wide and compound spikes 

 of yellowish-green flowers, the tallest spikes being six feet 

 high. There is a marked difference between this and 

 P. tenax, the New Zealand Flax, both in foliage and flow- 

 ers. Sir Joseph Hooker, when describing P. Hookeri from 

 a plant flowered in a garden in Cornwall seven years ago, 

 says it was first sent to him by Mr. R. Gunn, of Tasmania, 

 who found it in 1864 on the Waitangi River in New Zea- 

 land, where it grew pendulous from almost perpendicular 

 rocks in great abundance. The Kew plants are grown in 

 the temperate house, but I have seen examples in the open 

 air in Cornwall, and for several years three plants flour- 

 ished in a sheltered corner out-of-doors at Kew. 



EljEocarpus cyancus, also called E. reticulatus, is one of 

 the most charming of greenhouse shrubs, a plant of it six 

 feet high, with a bushy head, being now covered with 

 racemes of elegant white drooping bells half an inch long 

 and wide and beautifully fringed. Grown in a pot in a 

 sunny place out-of-doors during summer and housed in a 

 cold greenhouse in winter, this shrub flowers freely and is 

 most decorative. The leaves are oblong-lanceolate, three 

 inches long, dentate and dark green, the racemes springing 

 from the axils of every leaf. This species is a native of 

 Australia, from whence it was introduced in 1803, but I 

 question if it is known in half a dozen gardens in England 

 now. According to Bentham, it sometimes forms a- tree 

 sixty feet high. In addition to the flowers the drupe-like 

 torquoise-blue fruit are very ornamental. Ela?ocarpus is a 

 large genus of Tiliaceae. 



Mitraria coccinea is a beautiful little pot-shrub which 



deserves a place in every collection of conservatory plants, 

 or it may be grown out-of-doors in such favored localities 

 as Cornwall and south Ireland. It grows very freely, 

 forming a dense bush if the shoots are kept in check by 

 pinching during growth, and it flowers freely and con- 

 tinuously in spring and summer. Years ago it was a 

 popular plant in English gardens, and I remember it being 

 grown by market-nurserymen in a provincial town, where 

 it soon*became a popular window-plant. It has small 

 bright green, ovate-toothed leaves and axillary flowers, 

 which hang downward on slender stalks two inches long, 

 each flower being a fleshy bottle-shaped tube over an 

 inch long, colored bright scarlet, with a tinge of yellow in 

 the throat. It is a native of the island of Chiloe, and was 

 introduced by Messrs. Veitch, who first showed it at 

 Chiswick in 1849. 



Lychnis Viscaria, a British plant, has been improved by 

 cultivation and selection until we have now in the variety 

 called Splendens a superb plant for the open border, or even 

 for summer bedding, two large round beds of it being now 

 very attractive at Kew. The root-stock is woody and 

 perennial, the radical leaves about six inches long, narrow, 

 lanceolate, and the flowers are in erect crowded panicles a 

 foot and a half high, each flower an inch across, double, 

 and of a rich carmine-pink color. In color-effect they are 

 equal to the brightest of Brompton Stocks, but the panicles 

 are more elegant. This is the third year that these two 

 beds have made a good display in June. Probably the ex- 

 cessive wet of the last few weeks has been favorable to the 

 plant, for it is finer this year than it has ever been. It is 

 easily propagated by division. The Kew plants came 

 originally from Messrs. T. Ware & Sons, Tottenham. 



Aristolochia Goldieana is still one of the most wonder- 

 ful of all flowers, although the advent of A. gigas Sturte- 

 vantii has familiarized us with big-flowered Birthworts. 

 There is, however, a wide difference between these two, 

 for, while the latter is a robust, free-growing, free- flowering 

 vine, with the limb of the enormous flower flattened out, 

 suggestive of a very broad-brimmed hat, A. Goldieana 

 sends up its stems annually from a tuberous root-stock, 

 and flowers only on the very young shoots. The buds are 

 formed before the shoot is a foot long, and then a struggle 

 takes place between bud and growing shoot ; if the bud 

 gets the upper hand it develops rapidly, and the shoot 

 grows slowly, but if the shoot wins in the struggle, then it 

 grows as fast as a Bean, and the bud falls off. At Kew, A. 

 Goldieana is flowered almost every year. It is grown in a 

 pot in the hottest house, where, during summer, it re- 

 ceives liberal treatment till the shoots ripen. It is then 

 forced to rest and kept quite dry till the following spring, 

 when it is shaken out of the old soil, repotted in peat and 

 loam, and kept in a perpetual steam almost till the buds 

 are well advanced. Unless this treatment is carefully fol- 

 lowed out A. Goldieana will not flower. And what a 

 flower it does produce, a succulent funnel two feet long, 

 contracted and bent over in the middle, and then widening 

 upward, till at the mouth it is over a foot in diameter, with 

 three short tails. The color of the lower part of the tube 

 is pale yellow, the upper being green-yellow, with purple 

 reticulating veins ; inside the mouth is orange, with a thick 

 net-work of purple lines running into a blotch of purple 

 at the apex of the hairy trap-like throat. A. Goldieana is a 

 native of Old Calabar, where it grows in woods, the flowers 

 resting on the ground. It can easily be tracked from a 

 long distance when in flower by its powerful and disagreea- 

 ble odor. Trr 



London. W. Watson. 



Plant Notes. 



Ipomcea rubro-ccerulea. — This Morning Glory has, of 

 late years, been cultivated in California under the name of 

 Heavenly Blue, a title which can hardly be called an exagger- 

 ated description of its color, which is that pure tint seen in 

 the flowers of Salvia patens. At one time the plant was said 

 to have originated in the garden of a California florist, but 



