98 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 158. 



Unless we hold fast to these primary truths our parks may 

 be changed into places for miscellaneous out-door sport and 

 recreation ; they may afford the advantages of speed-roads 

 for the owners of fast horses or spacious promenades where 

 fashion may display its bravery and equipage, or, in ac- 

 cordance with Mr. Hyatt's idea, they may be "placed in 

 correlation with the educational systems " of our cities by 

 offering a home for thronging colonies of vertebrate and 

 invertebrate animals besides vast collections of stuffed and 

 dried curiosities, with all their vegetation ticketed and la- 

 beled, and trained lecturers discoursing on biology at con- 

 venient intervals. Public grounds prepared on any of 

 these plans would no doubt be of great value to any 

 city, but they would not be parks, nor serve the use of 

 parks. Neither recreation, in the specific sense of amuse- 

 ment, nor education, even under its most attractive guise, 

 but refreshment, pure and simple, for body and mind is the 

 primary office of the public park. And nowhere should 

 this fact be insisted upon more strenuously than in eager 

 American communities where there is little inclination to 

 give either mind or body their needed quota of peaceful, 

 unambitious hours. 



Recent Botanical Discoveries in China and 

 Eastern Burma. — III. 



Herbaceous Plants. — The herbaceous element in General 

 Collett's collection of plants from the southern Shan Hills is 

 not less interesting botanically than the shrubs and trees, and 

 there are many novelties sufficiently ornamental to engage the 

 attention of the horticulturist, and a few are exceptionally 

 beautiful or singular plants. Taking them in systematic order, 

 the first demanding notice is a species of Balsam {Impatiens 

 ccalcarata), a species so strongly resembling the pretty Impa- 

 tiens Chinensis as to be taken for it at the first glance; but, as 

 the specific name denotes, the flowers are spurless. With this 

 exception, it is so like the species named, in the dried state, at 

 least, as to suggest its being a morphological variation of it. 

 Yet among the very numerous specimens in the Kevv Herba- 

 rium we detected none in which the spur was wanting or 

 modified. It is a slender, almost unbranched, annual, a foot 

 to two feet high, with narrow, opposite, more or less toothed 

 leaves, whitish beneath, and solitary, axillary flowers on slen- 

 der stalks. The color is not stated, but they are probably white 

 or rose. Impatiens Chinensis itself deserves a word in this 

 place, as it is certainly a most elegant plant, the flowers vary- 

 ing in the wild state from deep purple to a soft rose, and there 

 is also a white variety. Although introduced into English 

 gardens as long ago as 1824 it is now rarely seen. Impatiens 

 fasciculata {Botanical Magazine, t. 4631) is a pale variety of 

 this species, and I. setacea (Hooker's " Exotic Flora," /. 137) 

 is another variety, having beautiful rose-purple flowers. 



The herbaceous Leguminosce from the Shan Hills offer little 

 that is specially interesting from a purely horticultural stand- 

 point, though there are several remarkable novelties. Crota- 

 laria perpusilla is a miniature representative of its genus ; 

 Neocollettia gracilis is a singular creeping plant with minute 

 flowers, belonging to a small group having one-seeded pods ; 

 and Phylacium majus is a fine new species of a previously 

 monotypic genus from the Malay archipelago. 



The herbaceous Composites, again, are few of them orna- 

 mental. Inula crassifolia is one of the most striking, having 

 thick, almost fleshy, leaves, and large yellow flower-heads. 

 This plant was collected in two very different conditions, 

 though all the specimens were in the same stage of develop- 

 ment. In one set they are thickly clothed with long, spreading 

 hairs ; in another set they are quite glabrous, so that at first 

 sight they would be taken for distinct species, but the plants 

 are probably all hairy at first, and the hairs early deciduous. 



Notonia crassissima is a shrubby member of this order 

 which I omitted to mention before. It has thick fleshy 

 branches, resembling some of the Euphorbias, such as E. ?ierii- 

 folia, and long-stalked, showy yellow flower-heads, and it grows 

 erect or trails over rocks. 



About half a dozen different Catnpanulacece were collected, 

 including several very pretty things, notably the elegant little 

 twiner Codonopsis convolvulacea, previously only known from 

 the contiguous province of Yun-nan, in China. General Col- 

 lett describes it as common all over the plateau, creeping 

 among grasses and twining around their culms until it reaches 

 air and sunlight, when it produces its beautiful, dark blue, 

 Convolvulus-like flowers. One species of the highly orna- 



mental, mainly east Asiatic, genus Adenophora was collected. 

 It is also common in the Kliasya Mountains, but had not hitherto 

 been referred to this genus. 



Primula Forbesii is a pretty species, originally and recently 

 described by Mr. Franchet from Yun-nan specimens. With one 

 or two other Chinese species, it forms a new section of the 

 genus of annual duration, and intermediate in character be- 

 tween Primula and Androsace. It is a very iloriferous plant, 

 with an almost flat rosette of thin leaves and very slender, 

 erect scape, bearing from one to three or more tiers of small 

 flowers similar to those of the Himalayan P. floribunda. It 

 grows abundantly in almost all damp localities throughout the 

 Shan States, being equally at home in the shady depths of the 

 forest and in the ridges raised to divide irrigated rice-fields ; 

 and it was found in flower in some situation or other in every 

 month of the year. 



Among Asclepiads, a very dwarf, tuberous-rooted Ceropegia 

 deserves notice. The flower-stems rise only four or five inches 

 above the ground, while the curiously constructed flowers are 

 themselves two inches long. Brachystelma cdulis is an allied 

 plant of even smaller dimensions with small rotate flowers. 

 It is common on the sandy plains of Upper Burma, and its 

 fleshy tubers are collected and sold in the bazaars as an article 

 of food ; but their flavor is not agreeable to a European 

 palate. 



There are two new species of the section Ophelia of 

 Swertia, neither more nor less pretty than most of those previ- 

 ously described of this elegant genus. 



Specially conspicuous and beautiful among the herbaceous 

 plants on the uplands are various Convolvulacece, especially 

 the genus Ipomsea, of which sixteen species were collected, 

 including two very ornamental new ones. Ipomcea nana is a 

 dwarf species almost concealed by the grasses among which 

 it usually grows. From the woody root-stocks spring erect 

 stems from six inches to a foot high, bearing very hairy, undi- 

 vided leaves, and large, axillary, solitary flowers of a rich deep 

 purple. Ipomcea Popahensis, the other new species, has very 

 similar flowers and foliage, but it has weak stems that twine 

 around grasses and other plants. It inhabits the isolated 

 Mount Popah, which rises to an altitude of 5,000 feet in the 

 plain of Upper Burma. 



There is nothing ornamental among the herbaceous Scro- 

 phularinece, and the solitary new Gesnerad has inconspicuous 

 flowers. Acajtthacece are more numerous, and some of them, 

 very pretty, notably among the new ones Strobilanthes con- 

 natus, found in great abundance in the dry forest-tract at 2,000 

 feet. The Labiata are numerously represented, and many of 

 them are ornamental, but all of them were previously known. 

 Prominent among them are Orthosiphon staminens, Cole- 

 brookia oppositifolia, Leucoscephum canum, and various spe- 

 cies of Plectranthus, Elsholtzia, Scutellaria and Coleus. But 

 the most ornamental of all is the previously little known Col- 

 quhounia elegans, which General Collett specially signalizes as 

 worthy of cultivation. It is an erect shrub, eight to ten feet 

 high, with ample foliage and dense axillary clusters of showy 

 flowers in the way of a Leonurus. As a species it is near C. 

 coccinea, figured in the Bota?iical Magazine (t. 4514). Two 

 varieties were collected, one having dark red and the other 

 salmon-colored flowers. A second and almost equally beau- 

 tiful species, C. vestita, was less common, though it inhabits 

 the mountains of northern India from Assam westward to 

 Kumaon. Orchids were not numerous, only twenty-two spe- 

 cies having been collected, though of these five are accounted 

 new, and two of these are exceedingly distinct, curious and 

 beautiful. A word first respecting the old ones, which in- 

 cluded Dendrobium lituiflorum, D. infundibulum, D. fimbria- 

 tum, D. capillipes and D. heterocarpum, better known as D. 

 aureum. Also among them were Vanda ccerulescens and 

 Cypripedium concolor, var. Godefroycz. 



The gem of the whole collection, perhaps, including the big 

 Rose and the big Honeysuckle, is an Orchid, which I have 

 named after its discoverer. It is Cirrhopetaluuc Collettii, the 

 finest species of the genus, and most nearly allied to C. oma- 

 tissimtim, figured in Warner's "Orchid Album," plate 369, but 

 having dark purple flowers, with exceedingly slender lateral 

 sepals about five inches long. These long, tail-like sepals are 

 wafted about by the slightest breath of air. But, what is more 

 curious, the comparatively small upper sepal and the two lat- 

 eral petals are furnished on their margins with small, ex- 

 tremely delicate, highly mobile appendages resembling - tiny 

 banners and streamlets, which " wriggle about in a very odd 

 manner." Amateurs will be glad to know that there is a good 

 healthy plant of this attractive novelty growing at Kew. 



The only other new Orchid I have to mention is Bulbophyl- 

 lum comosum, which has a bottle-brush-like inflorescence of 



