3°4 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 336- 



years ago by Messrs. Lemoine & Sons, Nancy, and is 

 already becoming a favorite shrub in English gardens. 

 There are several groups of it at Kew, and Messrs. J. 

 Veitch & Sons exhibited a nice example of it last Tuesday. 



Lilium elegans, var. Horsmani. — There are already many 

 named varieties of the Japanese L. elegans, more com- 

 monly known as L. Thunbergianum, and in this distinct 

 form named in compliment to the late Mr. Fred Horsman 

 we have a recent addition. It was shown last Tuesday by 

 Messrs. R. Wallace & Co., Colchester, and obtained a first- 

 class certificate. Its stems are only about a foot high, but 

 the flowers are large and of a deep brown-crimson color, 

 with dark brown spots. 



Rubus Japonicus, var. tricolor. — This likely little shrub, 

 which Messrs. J. Veitch & Sons introduced from Japan, ob- 

 tained a first-class certificate last Tuesday on account of 

 its prettily variegated foliage. The leaves are smaller than 

 in the type, and they are variously colored white, rose or 

 green, or a mixture of all three. Its variegation is likely 

 to render it more delicate than the type, although I learn 

 that it is quite hardy at Combe Wood. 



Summer Bedding. — Kew is setting a good example to 

 those who believe in a large use of the Scarlet Geranium 

 and such plants for color-effect in the garden during the 

 summer. The work is simplified by using only one color, 

 one kind of plant, in fact, for each bed, and the effect, in a 

 large garden, at any rate, is more pleasing. The large 

 beds which skirt the principal promenades are filled each 

 with a good Geranium (Pelargonium) or Calceolaria or 

 Heliotrope, and they are a great improvement on the intri- 

 cate and carpet-rug-like design which used to be worked 

 out with many kinds of plants in the old days. These 

 breadths of brilliant color are, of course, indispensable. 



London. W. WatSOIl. 



breeding of the different members of this genus. It is per- 

 fectly hardy here, flowering about the middle of June, and 

 has so far proved itself one of the most beautiful and satis- 

 factory plants of its class. C. S. S. 



New or Little-known Plants. 

 Spiraea bracteata. 



THIS handsome Japanese plant is an addition to our 

 shrubberies of real value. It is a shrub two to three 

 feet high with bright red twigs, ovate to obovate or nearly 

 orbicular leaves, entire below and coarsely serrate with a 

 few teeth above the middle, bright green on the upper sur- 

 face, paler on the lower, and one-half of an inch to an inch 

 in length. The flowers, which are white and are arranged in 

 rounded corymbs terminal on short leafy branches of the 

 year, are produced in the greatest profusion. The species 

 is easily recognized by the bract, to which it owes its 

 name, and which is borne near the middle of the pedicel of 

 the flower. On the lower pedicels of the inflorescence it is 

 leaf-like and often half an inch long, gradually growing 

 smaller on the upper pedicels, and becoming filiform on 

 the uppermost (see page 305). 



In Japan, Spiraea bracteata appears to be confined to the 

 central mountainous regions of the main island. There are 

 'specimens in the herbarium of the Arboretum received 

 from the Science College of the Imperial University of 

 Japan collected on Fugi-san, and two years ago I found it 

 at an elevation of 4,000 feet above the level of the sea by 

 the side of the road leading from Nikko to Lake Ymoto. 



Spirasa bracteata was first introduced into English gar- 

 dens by Von Siebold, and in the catalogue of his plants 

 sold in Leyden in 1882 it appeared, without description, as 

 Spiraea rotundifolia, flore albo. Two years later it was de- 

 scribed by Zabel (Gartenzeitung, iii., 496) as Spiraea brac- 

 teata, the oldest published name. Two years later Maxi- 

 mowicz received the same plant from the Japanese botanists 

 Tanaka and Yatabe, and described it as Spiraea Nipponica 

 (Mel. Biol, xii., 455), a mistake which he rectified on page 

 934 of the same publication. 



Spiraea bracteata was first received at the Arboretum in 

 1 89 1 from the Experiment Station at Ottawa, and subse- 

 quently from the Forest School of Munden, where Dr. 

 Zabel has paid special attention to the cultivation and 



Plant Notes. 



Rose Madame Georges Bruant. — This valuable Rose was 

 introduced several years ago, but is not yet widely known. 

 It is a hybrid of Rosa rugosa, and resembles its Japanese 

 parent in many respects. The leaves are of a rather light 

 green, and, though handsome, are quite inferior to those 

 of R. rugosa in color as well as in the peculiar crimping of 

 the upper surface. The growth of the hybrid is extremely 

 vigorous, and in a few years it reaches what may, without 

 exaggeration, be called an enormous bush with thick, spiny, 

 erect branches. The flowers are an almost pure white, 

 large, flat and nearly, but not entirely, double. They have 

 a very delicate fragrance and keep well in water. The 

 plant is perfectly hardy in New England, and produces a 

 first crop of flowers in June in great profusion. Not less than 

 two hundred flowers have been picked from a single plant. 

 They are produced during the whole summer in quantity 

 sufficient to supply a household. The Rose is not much at- 

 tacked by insects, but is in this respect not as fortunate as 

 R. rugosa. All things considered, this hybrid is a really 

 useful and valuable plant. With respect to insects, Dr. 

 Wolcott Gibbs writes that he has used for years with the 

 greatest success a solution made by putting two tablespoon- 

 fuls of powdered white hellebore and one of Californian 

 Dalmatian insect-powder into a five-gallon vessel, fill- 

 ing with boiling water, and allowing the whole to stand 

 overnight. The liquid is to be strained through cheese- 

 cloth, and then applied with a rose-syringe to both surfaces 

 of the leaves. Two applications are sufficient for a whole 

 summer. 



Rosa polyantha remontant. — We have several times called 

 attention to the useful Roses which were introduced a few 

 years since as R. polyantha remontant. These, it will be re- 

 membered, have flowered in ninety days from seed. In their 

 third year these plants continue to be perfectly hardy, and 

 make well-branched bushes some two feet high. These 

 have double and single flowers of various colors, whites 

 and reds. The single pinks are, perhaps, the most effective. 

 They are of the true remontant habit, giving a most abun- 

 dant show of flowers in the early year, at which time they 

 are of striking beauty in any collection of plants ; later they 

 give occasional smaller crops. 



Clematis Countess of Onslow. — In the last issue of the 

 London Journal of Horticulture is a portrait of this new 

 hybrid, which is interesting because its pollen parent is one 

 of our native species, Clematis coccinea, a Texan plant, 

 which is, nevertheless, hardy as far north as New Eng- 

 land. The seed parent of the new plant is Star of India, 

 one of the garden forms resembling in form the well-known 

 C. Tackmanni, and one of the section which bears great 

 numbers of flowers on the shoots of the current year. The 

 flowers of C. coccinea are solitary, shaped like a bell, 

 although constricted near the mouth. They are an inch 

 long, with thick leathery perianth divisions strongly 

 reflexed at the extremities. The flowers of the hybrid show 

 their descent from C. coccinea in being somewhat trumpet- 

 shaped, with a broad opening. In color they are bright 

 purple, with a scarlet band down the centre of each 

 petal. Since C. coccinea begins to flower in June and 

 continues without interruption until frost, it would be 

 interesting to know how this constantly blooming habit 

 affects the new plant. Most of the large-flowered garden 

 hybrids have proved very unsatisfactory of late years, be- 

 ing subject to a mysterious disease which carries them off 

 without warning, so that they are not planted to so great an 

 extent as they formerly were. We have so many good 

 species, however, such as C. vitalba, C. crispa, C. flam- 

 mula, C. graveolens, C. paniculata, C. Virginiana and many 



