August 29. 1894.] 



Garden and Forest. 



343 



In Austin County I happily ran across the rare and little- 

 known Thalictrurn debile. This low, weak-stemmed and 

 hardly erect species appears to have been discovered by 

 Buckley in Wilcox County, Alabama. Elihu Hall also found 

 it in eastern Texas. I do not find to this time that any other 

 botanist has found the plant. It was abundant when I saw it, 

 and in fruit as well as in flower. Aristolochia reticulata grows 

 in Pine-forests near Bellville, an extreme south-western station 

 for that species. 



The small southern Clover, Trifolium Bigariense, is very 

 common throughout central Texas. On the black lands it 

 forms quite an important part of the early-spring pasturage. 



At Hitchcock, Alvin and at other points on the mainland 

 near Galveston, and Houston and at other localities along the 

 coast, quite extensive experiments are being made to test the 

 adaptability of this region to general fruit-culture. As the 

 tourist rides over the wide stretches of prairie about Houston, 

 still largely a cattle country, he wonders that during nearly a 

 half-century of statehood such a problem has not been fully 

 settled. Texas has now a horticultural society, composed of 

 efficient men and women, able to give reliable information 

 about fruit-growing in this state. 



Eagle Pass, Texas. 



E. N. Plank. 



Foreign Correspondence. 

 London Letter. 



THE weather here is unfavorable for gardens. Cold, 

 heavy rains are frequent, and bright sunshine is as 

 rare now as in October. This has been so for the past six 

 weeks, and, consequently, the outlook for agriculturists 

 and horticulturists is not promising. Lawns certainly are 

 brighter and trees greener than is usual at this time of 

 year, but vegetation generally looks far too succulent to be 

 safe. On the other hand, some plants are enjoying the 

 extra amount of moisture ; for instance, bulbous plants, 

 which, at Kew at any rate, are flowering well. Liliums, 

 Tigridias, Crocosmias, Gladioluses, and Watsonias out-of- 

 doors, Hymenocallis, Hasmanthus, Griffinia and other Cape 

 bulbs, indoors, are better this year than usual. I propose 

 to devote my letter this week to some of the most note- 

 worthy of these now flowering at Kew. 



Crinum Powelli album. — This is the best of all Crinums 

 that can be grown permanently out-of-doors in the warmer 

 parts of England, and there are few, if any, that surpass it 

 among the eighty or more species that have been described. 

 It takes time to reveal itself, a single bulb planted in a shel- 

 tered sunny border making an indifferent display for the 

 first year or two. But if it is happy — and ordinary treat- 

 ment satisfies it — offsets will be formed at the base and 

 grow up into fine bulbs, until in about five years one may 

 have such a grand specimen as is now in flower in a wall- 

 border at Kew. Its leaves form a healthy cluster four feet 

 through and a yard high, glossy green and pleasing in 

 every sense, while the flower-scapes stand well above the 

 leaves, and each bears an umbel of from five to ten snow- 

 white flowers, each five inches across, with wide expand- 

 ing, 'overlapping segments. It is a grand plant, a grand 

 hybrid. 



Crinum Moorei album. — I have already described this 

 plant as we know it here, in vol. iii., p. 538, but it is so fine 

 this year that it warrants further description. Our plant is 

 in the large temperate house and is planted on the margin 

 of one of the beds. It has a bulb as large as an ostrich 

 egg and a long stem-like neck with broad, wide-spreading 

 leaves two to three feet long. It bears two stout scapes 

 two feet above the top of the neck and the flowers are six 

 inches across, pure white, with graceful nodding tubes. 

 They last a week or more, and as there are twelve in each 

 umbel and they open in slow succession, the flowering sea- 

 son extends over six weeks or more. I have never seen this 

 plant tried in the border outside, but I know that the type, 

 C. Moorei, is hardy in the south. There is no more beau- 

 tiful bulbous plant in the garden than this. It produces 

 offsets freely. 



Crinum Schimperi. — Bulbs of this very promising garden- 

 plant have been in cultivation at Kew since 1883, when it 



was introduced from Abyssinia and distributed by Herr 

 Max Leichtlin under the name of C. Abyssinicum. It was 

 again distributed in 1889 from the Berlin Botanic Garden 

 under its proper name, and a figure of it (a poor one) pub- 

 lished in Kegel's Garlenflora, t. 1309. Both the Berlin and 

 Baden-Baden bulbs have flowered this year in an unheated 

 frame at Kew. They have semi-erect subdistichous glau- 

 cous leaves two feet long, and a cylindrical scape eighteen 

 inches high, bearing an umbel of six pure white flowers as 

 large as those of C. longifolium (Capense) and very fra- 

 grant. The Kew plants were at first grown in pots in a 

 warm house, but this treatment did not suit them. They 

 have been planted out for the last three years against a 

 wall in an unheated frame, from which frost is excluded in 

 winter. C. Abyssinicum is a good distinct species not yet 

 in cultivation. 



Hippeastrum brachyandrum. — This is a rare bulbous plant, 

 but it is likely to become as common as any, as it is easily 

 grown, seeds freely, flowers in two years from seeds, may 

 be grown all summer in the open border and bears large, 

 handsome trumpet-shaped flowers of attractive colors. It 

 has only been known in cultivation four years, Kew ob- 

 taining a single bulb of it from Mr. Bartholomew, of Read- 

 ing, who introduced it from south Brazil and first flowered it 

 in 1 890. Now we have it flowering in pots in the cool green- 

 house and in a bed out-of-doors, besides a frame full of 

 seedlings. This is what Mr. Baker says of it, that it has 

 much the largest flower of all the Habranthus section of the 

 genus, and the color is very beautiful, beginning as a pale 

 pink, like that of Amaryllis blanda and ending as a deep 

 blackish-red at the base of the segments. It has bulbs and 

 leaves like those of Nerine and an erect scape a foot long, 

 bearing a single erect flower as large as a Belladonna Lily. 



Gladiolus platyphyllus. — This is a remarkable species, 

 if not a very attractive one. At Kew its leaves are fully 

 three inches wide and eighteen inches long, while the 

 spike, which is as thick as a man's finger, reaches to a 

 height of four and a half feet. The flowers differ from 

 those of G. dracocephalus in being darker and in having 

 some blotches of purple about the base of the segments. 

 They also differ in their arrangement on the spike, the 

 tubes curving inward, so that the flowers are crossed over 

 each other obliquely in front. There is another Gladiolus, 

 now flowering at Kew for the first time, which is like G. 

 dracocephalus in every way except that the flowers are 

 almost olive-green, closely grained and lined with claret- 

 purple. These dull-colored "Sword Lilies" are worth a 

 place in the garden of those cultivators whose tastes are 

 highly "correct.'' 



LLlmanthus carneus. — This deserves to be added to the 

 list of meritorious garden Hasmanthi which I sent you a 

 few weeks ago. It is the best of the section Melicho, 

 characterized by thick bifarious bulb-tunics, thick, fleshy 

 leaves and spreading flowers and spathe valves. There 

 are several well-marked varieties of it in cultivation at 

 Kew, and they are now in flower in the Cape-house. The 

 scapes are about a foot long, erect, compressed, pinkish 

 and mottled, covered with soft hairs and bearing a globose 

 head three or four inches through, formed of numerous 

 soft pink flowers in the type, white in the variety alba. 

 Another variety is remarkable for the deep shade of pink 

 of its flowers. The plant thrives in a cool sunny green- 

 house, and it flowers every year, the flowers lasting about 

 a month. The species was first introduced to Kew by 

 Masson, the Kew collector, exactly a century ago. 



Lycoris aurea. — This handsome Chinese bulbous plant 

 is scarcely known in English gardens, and the few who 

 have made its acquaintance have learned to dislike it be- 

 cause it behaves so badly under cultivation. It is a native 

 of China and Formosa, and is cultivated in Japan under 

 the name of Nerine aurea. When at its best it is an at- 

 tractive plant with stout Nerine-like foliage, a terete e 

 from a foot to two feet in length and an umbellate inflo- 

 rescence, formed of bright yellow flowers three inches long, 

 with curved crisped segments half an inch wide and decli- 



