40 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 153. 



New or Little Known Plants. 

 New Orchids. 



L/ELIA anceps, var. Thomsoniana, O'Brien. — Described as 

 an exceptionally large and brightly colored variety, near the 

 variety Amesiana. The segments are delicate blush-rose, and 

 the lip very darkly colored. It appeared in the collection of 

 W. J. Thomson, Esq., of St. Helens, Lancashire. — Gardeners' 

 Chronicle, December 20th, p. 716. 



Cypripedium x Leeanum, var. giganteum, Rolfe, is an ex- 

 ceptionally large form, raised by Messrs. Heath & Son, of Chel- 

 tenham, from C. Spicerianum fertilized with the pollen of a 

 large form of C. insigne. The dorsal sepal is over two and 

 three-quarters inches in diameter, and the petals two and seven- 

 eighths inches long, and barely under an inch across near the 

 apex. — Gardeners' Chronicle, December 20th, p. 718. 



Cymbidium Tracyanum, Hort., is a large and showy Cym- 

 bidium which I believe to be a variety of C. grandiflorum. 

 Griff. (C Hookerianum, Rchb. f.), with the sepals and petals 

 striped like a dark-colored C. giganteum. It agrees in other 

 respects. The flowers are five and a half inches in diameter. 

 It was exhibited by Mr. H. A. Tracy, of Twickenham, at a 

 meeting of the Royal Horticultural Society on December 9th 

 last, when it was awarded a first-class certificate. A few days 

 later the plant was sold for seventy-five guineas to Messrs. F. 

 Sander&Co., of St. Albans.— Gardeners' Chronicle, December 

 20th, p. 718; also December 15th, p. 702. 



Masdevallia Schroederiana, Hort. — This pretty little Mas- 

 devallia, described on an earlier page of these notes, is figured 

 in the Journal of Horticulture, for December 25th, p. 557, 



Fig. 74- 



RODRIGUEZIA Fuerstenbergii, Kranzlin, is a lovely species 

 allied to R. Leeana, Rchb. f., with pale rose sepals and snow- 

 white petals and lip, the latter with a golden yellow blotch and 

 eight lines of the same color on the disc. The flowers are two 

 inches long. It appeared in the collection of Count Fuersten- 

 berg, of Donaueschingen, from an importation made by 

 Messrs. F. Sander & Co., of St. Albans. — Gardeners' Chronicle, 

 December 27th, p. 746. 



Cypripedium x Eyermanianum, Rolfe, is a distinct and pretty 

 hybrid raised in the establishment of Messrs. F. Sander & Co., 

 of St. Albans, between C. barbatum grandiflorum and C. Spi- 

 cerianum, the latter believed to be the pollen parent. As in 

 many other cases, it presents a curious combination of the 

 characters of the two parent species. It received an award of 

 merit from the Royal Horticultural Society on November nth 

 last. — Gardeners' Chrotiicle, December 27th, p. 746. 



Cypripedium x Deboisianum, Ch. de B. — A hybrid raised by 

 Messrs. Edm. Vervaet & Co., of Mont St. Amand, by crossing 

 C. venustum with the pollen of C. Boxallii atratum. It re- 

 ceived a certificate'of merit from the Societe Royale d'Horti- 

 culture de Gand, and from the Chambre Syndicale des 

 Horticulteurs Beiges. — Gardeners' Chronicle, December 27th, 



P- 747- 

 Kew. R. A. Rolfe. 



Foreign Correspondence. 



London Letter. 



Low Temperatures for Tropical Plants. — The minimum 

 temperature that a plant will endure with impunity cannot 

 apparently be arrived at without actual experiment. The 

 temperature of its wild habitat affords little or no assistance 

 upon this point. It frequently happens that one of two plants 

 from a given locality will bear exposure to severe frosts, while 

 the other cannot endure even a degree or two. Instances of 

 this nature are common among the plants from New Zealand, 

 the Cape and Japan. We sometimes laugh at the apparent 

 absurdities committed by our grandfathers in growing the 

 Chusan Palm, Aucuba Japonica, Sophora Japonica, Ginkgo 

 biloba, Areca sapida and many more in greenhouses, or 

 even stoves, from a belief that they required such treatment. 

 But in all these cases it has been only after experiments ex- 

 tending over a long period, or by accident, that the "hardiness" 

 of these plants in England has been discovered. 



The cold weather of the past month here, coupled with 

 dense fog at times so black as to almost produce darkness, has 

 necessitated exceptional treatment for many in-door plants. Itis 

 an established axiom in horticulture that the intenser the light, 

 the higher the temperature may be, within reasonable limits, 

 with advantage, and of course the converse of this is equally 

 sound. When, therefore, the day is almost as dark as the night, 

 we make it the rule to keep the temperature of the houses the 



same for the day as for the night. Consequently, the tempera- 

 ture in the large Palm-house at Kew has during the past cold, 

 dark weather been kept regularly at about fifty-five degrees, 

 and on several occasions it has even fallen to fifty degrees, while 

 scarcely once has it risen to sixty degrees. In very severe 

 frosts, especially if accompanied by cold wind, more harm is 

 done by the hard firing necessary to keep a temperature of, 

 say, sixty degrees, than by the five degrees lower temperature. 

 It has been proved at Kew that stove plants generally in win- 

 ter are happiest when kept in a minimum temperature of from 

 fifty-five to sixty degrees, with a fairly dry atmosphere. The 

 plants in the Palm-house include such intensely tropical sub- 

 jects as the Durian, Cocoanut, most of the Palms from 

 Mauritius and the Seychelles, Pandani of many kinds, in fact, 

 representatives of nearly all of the most tropical forms of vege- 

 tation. The minimum "temperature that such plants are called 

 upon to endure when in a wild state is, according to Hum- 

 boldt, seventy degrees. Yet, in glass houses in England it has 

 been proved that they will bear a temperature as much as 

 twenty degrees below this without apparently suffering in the 

 least. It is possible that many of them would bear even more 

 than this. We have proof of the hardier nature, hitherto un- 

 revealed to horticulturists, of some of the tropical genera of 

 Palms, such as Caryota, Oreodoxa, Seaforthia, Cocos and 

 Chamaedorea, which have endured in the large temperate 

 .house at Kew a temperature of from forty to fifty degrees for 

 about three weeks. 



Landscape-gardening. — Mr. William Morris, poet and so- 

 cialist, has contributed to the New Review for January a paper 

 on "The Socialists' Ideal in Art," in which he points out the 

 relations of art to society. Art, he says, "is kept alive by a 

 small group of artists working in a spirit quite antagonistic to 

 the time ; and they also suffer from the lack of co-operation, 

 which is an essential lack in the art of our epoch. . . . Nor 

 have they any position or power of helping the public in gen- 

 eral matters of taste. For example, in laying out all the parks 

 and pleasure-grounds which have lately been acquired for the 

 public, as far as I know, no artist has been consulted, whereas 

 they ought to have been laid out by a committee of artists; 

 and I will venture to say that' even a badly chosen committee 

 (and it might easily be well chosen) would have saved the 

 public from most of the disasters which have resulted from 

 handing them over to the tender mercies of the landscape- 

 gardener." Mr. Morris goes on to declare that "art as it is 

 cannot build a decent house, or ornament a book, or lay out a 

 garden, or prevent the ladies of our time from dressing in a 

 way that caricatures the body and degrades it." Evidently Mr. 

 Morris holds the belief that whatever is, is wrong, except, per- 

 haps, socialistic views. Art in the garden is like art in most 

 things, and what is perfection in one man's eyes is sometimes 

 abominable in another's. There are, of course, many gardens 

 which are so badly constructed as to offend even the common 

 eye, but it is as ridiculous to blame the landscape-gardenerfor 

 these as it would be to blame painters for all the bad pictures 

 and poets for all the trash called poetry that one meets with 

 everywhere. A landscape-gardener should be an artist, or he 

 has no just claim to his title ; his training must be at least as 

 strict and his taste as good as that which makes a landscape- 

 painter. It seems to me, therefore, as absurd to set painters 

 to make good gardens as to expect landscape-gardeners to 

 make good pictures with oil and canvas. There is surely a 

 great deal more in the making of a garden than the disposi- 

 tion of walks and beds and lawns. A knowledge of the ma- 

 terial to be used in its composition must be of first importance, 

 and a man who is not a gardener cannot be expected to pos- 

 sess this. Probably the opinion of a committee of artists on 

 the plan of a garden or on the garden when made might be of 

 some value to the landscape-gardener, but the latter, if pos- 

 sessed of the true principles of garden architecture, would, I 

 fancy, produce a much finer garden than any committee of 

 artists, however well selected, that did not include a landscape- 

 gardener among them. 



Tritonia and Freesia.— In an interesting article on Trito- 

 nias, by Mr. W. E. Endicott (p. 600), a statement occurs at the 

 end which, if correct, is of considerable biological interest. It 

 is this : "Some years ago I hybridized the white form of Free- 

 sia refracta and Tritonia crocata. Singularly enough the 

 resulting plants bore flowers which were Freesia pure and 

 simple, though the Tritonia was the seed parent." Mr. Endi- 

 cott's contributions to your paper are so careful and accurate 

 that I hesitate to express any doubt of the trustworthiness of the 

 statement here quoted. Freesia and Tritonia are so different 

 that I cannot understand how what Mr. Endicott records could 

 have occurred. The Tritonia has large, orange-colored flowers 

 with broad refracted segments, and they are produced on tall 



