November 14. 1894.] 



Garden and Forest. 



453 



and a lack of skill in placing, which can hardly be paral- 

 leled. 



Nowhere else has Nature worked more skillfully to pre- 

 pare a place for a pleasure resort ; but rarely has man, with 

 much money at command, done more to contradict and 

 obscure her intentions. Newport seems to express osten- 

 tation rather than true elegance, a feeling for the sumptuous 

 rather than a feeling for the beautiful, the desire to be lavish 

 and conventional rather than the desire to be artistic and 

 individual. And in producing the totality of this expression 

 its gardens play an even more prominent part than its 

 houses. 



Foreign Correspondence. 

 London Letter. 

 Alberta magna was distributed as a new plant in 1891 by 

 Mr. W. Bull, but it had been in cultivation at Kew several 

 years before that time, and there is now a plant in the 

 winter garden seven feet high, besides smaller specimens 

 in pots. One of these is now flowering for the first time 

 in cultivation. The genus belongs to the order Rubiacese, 

 and while A. magna is a native of Natal, the only other 

 species known is a native of Madagascar. The leaves of 



A. magna, which promises to grow into a small tree, are 

 not unlike those of the Cherry Laurel, and the flowers, 

 which are in crowded terminal panicles, are tubular, an 

 inch long and colored bright crimson. When fully grown 

 the plants will, no doubt, produce larger heads than these 

 now at Kew, and as the flowers are succeeded by winged 

 fruits of a bright red color, the plant has a double attrac- 

 tion. From its behavior at Kew it is possible that it will 

 bear a few degrees of frost. It is evergreen, and pleasing 

 to look at even out of flower. 



Pincs Ayacahuite. — Although introduced into English 

 gardens fifty years ago by Hartweg, and again by Roezl, 

 this handsome Mexican Pine has not found any recogni- 

 tion among growers of Coniferse, even in those parts of the 

 country where it would succeed. Messrs. G. Paul & Son, 

 of Cheshunt, have, or had, a tree of it about forty feet high, 

 which coned in 1S82, and there is a healthy example of it 

 in the garden of Mr. Freeman-Mitford, at Batsford, near 

 Stratford-on-Avon. This week a cone-bearing branch of it 

 has been sent to Kew by Mr. John Tremayne, of St. Austell, 

 in Cornwall, who writes that it was planted in his garden 

 about forty years ago, and has always borne the name of 

 P. nigricans. It is now a large tree, "a far better thing 

 than any P. excelsa I have ever seen," but it does not often 

 produce cones. The specimen sent bore a cluster of three 

 cones, each a foot long and four inches wide, slightly 

 curved, the scales large and open. In Mexico it grows to 

 a height of one hundred feet, and is not unlike P. excelsa, 

 to which it is closely allied. There are many places in the 

 United Kingdom and elsewhere where this fine Pine would 

 thrive as well as it does at St. Austell. 



Begonia margaritacea. — This is a new hybrid between 



B. coccinea (corallina) and the bronzy-purple-leaved variety 

 of B. incarnata, known as Arthur Mallet. It was shown 

 by Messrs. J. Veitch & Sons, the raisers, this week, and 

 received an award of merit on account of the pretty colora- 

 tion of its leaves, which are dark purple, profusely spotted 

 with pinkish white. It is likely to become a favorite 

 foliage Begonia, and from the floral characters of both its 

 parents it ought to be equally attractive as a flowering 

 plant. 



. Momordica mixta. — Fruits of this fine tropical Gourd 

 have been grown this year for the first time at Kew. I 

 noted the male plant some time ago as a handsome stove- 

 climber well worth growing for its large, velvety, cream- 

 yellow and maroon flowers, but these are comparatively 

 unattractive by the side of the brilliant orange-scarlet 

 fruits, which are about the size of ostrich-eggs, and 

 covered all over with spiny points suggestive of sea- 

 urchins" The plant is perennial, and has a tuberous root- 

 stock, from which the annual stems grow to a length of 



twenty feet or more. Of course, both male and female 

 plants must be grown, and the flowers fertilized artificially, 

 if the fruit are to be developed in cultivation. A piece of 

 stem bearing three fruits within a few inches of each other 

 was shown at the Drill Hall this week, and attracted the 

 attention of decorators as well as pomologists. The spe- 

 cies is a native of the east, including Cochin China, 

 another name for it being M. Cochinchinensis. 



Benincasa cerifera, the Chinese Wax Gourd, was also 

 shown from Kew. This is one of the most striking of the 

 big-fruited Gourds grown over the Water-lily tank, its 

 fruits being two feet long and about nine inches in diame- 

 ter, covered with erect bristly white hairs and encased in 

 a thick layer of gray- white, wax-like bloom, which is said 

 to have some economic value in China. It is also known 

 as the White Gourd. Another name for it is B. hispida. 



Tournefortia cordifolia, which was distributed by Mon- 

 sieur Bruant two years ago as a new Boragewort of 

 shrubby habit, with large cordate leaves and crowded ter- 

 minal-branched racemes of Heliotrope-like white flowers, 

 is now flowering at Kew for the first time. Whatever it 

 may be like in South America, where it was found by 

 Monsieur E. Andr6, who introduced it, there is little charm 

 in it as a flowering plant here, although the leaves are 

 large and handsome, and there is the possibility of cross- 

 ing it with Heliotrope, as suggested by Monsieur Bruant. 

 The leaves are cordate, six inches by four, on petioles two 

 to three inches long, and they are of a rich dark green 

 color, with the texture of the leaves of common Heliotrope. 

 There is a figure of the plant in Revue Hor/icole, 1887, page 

 128, which is reproduced in Monsieur Bruant's Catalogue 

 for .1892. 



Richardia jEthiopica, the well-known Calla, is proving a 

 useful aquatic in the south of England. I have seen and 

 heard of it this year in several gardens, where it grows on 

 the side of lakes or ponds, the roots being planted a foot 

 below the surface of the water, so that 'the frost cannot 

 reach them. One grower has them in water two feet deep, 

 where they have stood several winters and flowered well 

 iu the summer. The Gardeners' Chronicle this week re- 

 produces a photograph of a large piece of water in Trelis- 

 sick, Cornwall, showing a large expanse of Richardia all 

 along the margins and crowded with flowers. Primula 

 Japonica is equally fine on the banks near the water. I 

 have seen this plant as thick as Clover round the sides of a 

 lake in Cornwall. The Richardia as a water-plant is a 

 good "wrinkle." In south Africa it chokes the streams 

 and fills the ditches and swamps. It is quite different in 

 habit from the other species of this genus. 



Miltonia Bleuana rosea is a third variety of the hybrid 

 Miltonia raised by Monsieur Bleu, of Paris, from M. vexil- 

 laria and M. Roezlii, and which flowered for the first time 

 five years ago, the seeds having been sown in 1SS4. The 

 same cross was effected by Messrs. J. Veitch & Sons and 

 flowered in 1 89 1. The flowers are four inches across, simi- 

 lar in construction to those of a good variety of M. vexil- 

 laria, white, with a dash of red-purple at the base of the 

 segments. A variety called aurea has a conspicuous blotch 

 of yellow on the disk of the labellum, and this new variety 

 rosea is remarkable in having a suffusion of rose on the 

 greater part of the petals. A plant of it, bearing a six-flow- 

 ered spike, was shown this week by Monsieur Jules Hye 

 Leysen, of Ghent, and obtained a first-class certificate. If 

 this hybrid proves to be as easily grown and multiplied by 

 division as M. vexillaria it will be a most useful addition 

 of what are here known as Pansy-flowered Orchids. 



Onicidium ornithorhynchum albiflorum is a beautiful 

 Orchid when grown and flowered as Mr. R. J. Measures 

 exhibited it this week, his plant carrying no less than seven- 

 teen spikes, bearing about seven hundred flowers. It was 

 awarded a first-class certificate, not because it is new, for 

 it was first flowered by the late Mr. John Day in his famous 

 Tottenham collection twenty-one years ago. The type is 

 a well-known cool-house Orchid, its warty-lipped rose-lilac 

 flowers, with a smell suggestive of rhubarb, being com- 



