64 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 155 



ralistic surroundings and a heterogeneousness without har- 

 mony or coherent effect ? Would his Elysium have been 

 improved by railings to show just how much property each 

 dead man might claim ? Or by mounds to explain beneath 

 just what square of turf his body lay ? Have we not here at 

 once harmony and variety, dignity, grace and true repose ? 

 And while each monument helps the effect of the others, is 

 not each sufficiently conspicuous and individualized ? Of 

 course we cannot often have Grecian colonnades or statues of 

 the importance of the " Diane " — nor should we want one just 

 like the " Diane," which was evidently out of place in a so- 

 called cemetery. But simple square tombs, columnar shafts, 

 and small monuments like the one we see to the right of the 

 " Diane" are well within our reach, and there is no possible 

 reason why our planting should not be as artistically done as 

 the old monks had done it, in unwitting anticipation of Lenoir's 

 needs. 



One longs to know whether Lenoir really altered the garden, 

 or, if not, just when and by whom it had been arranged. For, 

 at the end of the last century, " natural " gardening arrange- 

 ments had only just begun to be liked in France, Marie Antoi- 

 nette's famous " English Garden " at Versailles having been 

 the first of its kind. A small urban garden is the last to which 

 we should have looked for an innovation upon the long-pre- 

 vailing formality in design. 



New York. M. G. Van Rensselaer. 



January 10th represents a flowering branch of one of the 

 varieties of Clematis Viticella, a native of southern Europe 

 and western Asia, and an inhabitant of gardens for three cen- 

 turies at least. Clematis Viticella is one of the most graceful 

 and charming of all hardy climbing plants, with long-stemmed 

 drooping flowers, which appear in succession from June until 

 September. Many varieties have been developed in cultivation, 

 that figured in The Garden being one of the most attractive. 



Plant Notes. 

 Some Recent Portraits. 



A LARGE part of the first number of the new volume of 

 the Botanical Magazine is devoted to the wonderful Aroid 

 of Sumatra, Amorphophallus Titanum, which flowered last 

 year at Kevv, two double and a single plate [t. 7153, 7154, 7155) 

 being necessary to display its habit and floral structure. This 

 plant is certainly- one of the wonders of the vegetable world, 

 and the fact that it has been grown and flowered at Kew is 

 pretty good testimony, if such testimony were needed, of the 

 enterprise and skill of the Director of that great establishment 

 and of his assistants. "The single flower," to quote from Dr. 

 Beccari's account of its discovery, reproduced by the editor of 

 the Botanical Magazine, " with the tuber from which it springs 

 almost directly, form together so ponderous a mass that for 

 the purpose of transporting it it had to be lashed to a long pole, 

 the ends of which were placed on the shoulders of two men. 

 To give an idea of the size of this gigantic flower it is enough 

 to say that a man standing upright can barely reach with his 

 hand the top of the spadix which occupies the centre of the 

 flower, and that with open arms he can scarcely reach half- 

 way round the circumference of the funnel-shaped spathe 

 from the bottom of which the spadix arises." Forbes, in his 

 " Naturalist's Wanderings in the Eastern Archipelago," en- 

 countered the plant, and describing it says, on page 175, that 

 he found it in the Barisan range growing in sandy soil, the 

 largest specimen measuring seventeen feet in height, and 

 again that on the Kling River he met with the largest tubers 

 which have yet been noticed. They were six feet six inches in 

 circumference, the stem at the base girthing two feet seven 

 inches, the whole forming a load for twelve men. But per- 

 haps even a better idea of the size of this plant appears from the 

 fact that a full-size drawing of it, made under the direction of 

 its discoverer, Dr. Beccari himself, and presented to Kew, occu- 

 pies a canvas, without margin, which is eighteen feet long by 

 fifteen feet six inches broad. It represents a leaf of the full 

 size growing out of the ground, and underneath it two Suma- 

 trans carrying a flowering specimen lashed to a pole. 



The other plant figured in this issue of the Botanical Maga- 

 zine is Dipladenia illicstris, var. glabra (t. 7156), a native of 

 Brazil, where it has a wide range from the Province of Bahia, 

 in the north, to that of St. Paul, in the south. It is a pretty 

 stove-house climber, with rosy red flowers and thick, coria- 

 ceous, dark green leaves. 



The colored plate of the issue of January 1st of the Revue 

 Horticole is devoted to the beautiful new hybrid dark red Rose, 

 La France de 1889, obtained by Monsieur Moreau-Robert, of 

 Angers, by crossing the Rose Marie Henriette with pollen 

 from La France. The seed obtained from this cross was 

 sown in the spring of 1883. It produced two plants only. Of 

 these one produced a single flower, and the other, which grew 

 vigorously, is the one to which this rather unfortunate name 

 has been bestowed. Monsieur Carriere believes that La 

 France de 1889 is one of the best seedling Roses ever obtained 

 in France. 



The colored plate of the issue of The Garden (London) for 



New or Little Known Plants. 

 Clethra alnifolia, var. tomentosa. 



THIS handsome plant, which botanists consider a va- 

 riety of the Clethra or Pepper-bush, which is so com- 

 mon along the borders of swamps near the sea-coast of 

 the northern states, is quite distinct from the garden point 

 of view and a desirable plant to cultivate, because it does 

 not bloom until the northern Clethra is out of flower, and 

 because it continues to produce its flowers late into the 

 autumn. 



This variety, as it appears in the Arnold Arboretum, 

 forms a spreading bush three or four feet high with ample, 

 ovate leaves, entire toward the base, sharply serrate above, 

 two and a half to three inches long, one and a half inches 

 broad, pointed or rounded at the apex, and covered even 

 at maturity on the lower surface, as are the shoots of the 

 year, the branches of the panicles, the pedicels and the 

 outer surface of the calyx, with dense hoary tomentum, 

 which is the characteristic feature of this plant. The flow- 

 ers are produced in panicled racemes, which exceed in 

 length those of the northern plant, and are sometimes six 

 or eight inches long. The individual flowers, too, are 

 considerably larger, but otherwise not different from those 

 of the common Clethra. 



Clethra alnifolia, var. tomentosa* is probably a rare plant 

 in its native swamps, and I have never found it in any 

 part of the southern states I have visited. It was discov- 

 ered by the elder Michaux growing in swamps in South 

 Carolina, and there is a specimen in the Gray Herbarium 

 collected by Chapman in Florida, without any particular 

 locality being indicated, and one from Alabama, also with- 

 out locality. It is, however, an old inhabitant of European 

 gardens, where it appeared during the last century, and 

 various portraits of it have been published, although none 

 of them do much justice to the beauty of the plant. 



The specimen from which our figure (Fig. 14, p. 65) 

 has been made has been growing for a number of years 

 in the Arboretum, where it flowers regularly during nearly 

 two months every autumn with the aid of a slight winter 

 protection of evergreen branches, but it has not produced 

 fruit. It was derived from the Royal Gardens at Kew. 



______ c. s. s. 



Foreign Correspondence. 

 New Plants of 1890. 



HPHE new and noteworthy plants introduced into English 

 -^ gardens last year were noticed by me almost weekly in 

 my letter to Garden and Forest, while in his lists of new 

 Orchids Mr. Rolfe has kept your readers well informed of 

 these plants. It may, however, be worth while passing in 

 review the most noteworthy of all these new introductions, 

 judging them on their merits as plants for the garden. For a 

 plant may interest, and even appear pretty, in a botanical sense, 

 and yet have little or no claim to the notice of horticulturists. 



The whole catalogue of the new plants of last year contains 

 scarcely anything of exceptional merit. Not even among 

 Orchids, usually so rich in new prizes for the cultivator, is 

 there any one plant of extraordinary interest or beauty equal 

 to those we already possessed, though there are not a few 

 which might be classed as first-rate acquisitions did they not 

 resemble so closely others already in cultivation. 



* Clethra alnifolia, var. tomentosa, Michaux, "Fl.," i., 260. — Chapman, "Fl. S. 

 States," 264.- — Gray, "Syn. Fl.," ii., i., 45. 



C. tomentosa, Lamarck, "Diet.," ii., 46. — Hooker, Bot. Mag., t. 3743. — Watson, 

 "' Dend. Brit," i., 39, t. 39. — Loudon, " Arb. Brit.," ii., 1128, Figs. 928, 929. 



C. incana, Persoon, "Syn.," i., 482. 



C. pubescens, Willdenow, " Enum.," 455. 



