124 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 160. 



Bower the appearance of a large-beaked bird with outstretched 

 wings, only the beak is turned over the back. The flowers 

 appear to be of a beautiful bright red. P. Chinensis has white 

 or pale yellow flowers, with an exceedingly slender tube three 

 inches in length. P. nmscicola, as the name denotes, grows 

 among moss. It is of very slender habit, with solitary axillary 

 llowers, about two inches long, and of a deep purple" red. P. 

 viacrosiphon is a closely allied species with even longer flow- 

 ers. But almost all of the species are beautiful, and I must 

 break off here. 

 Kew. IV. Bottlng Hemsley. 



New or Little Known Plants. 



Bessera elegans. 



SUMMER-BLOOMING bulbous plants succeed as a class 

 in our climate, and deserve more general attention at 

 the hands of cultivators than they receive. A few intelli- 

 gent and enthusiastic amateurs grow them successfully, 

 and obtain a great deal of pleasure and satisfaction from 

 doing so ; but, with the exception of some of the hybrid 

 Gladioli, such plants are practically unknown in most of 

 our gardens. 



The pretty liliaceous Bessera elegans, which is repre- 

 sented in the illustration on page 125, is one of the best 

 plants of this class. It is a native of the mountains of 

 southern Mexico, and, if treated like a hybrid Gladiolus — 

 that is, if the bulbs are lifted in the autumn and stored 

 during winter in a dry place and replanted in the spring — 

 it can be grown with perfect ease, and will repay the little 

 care it requires with its bright flowers, which open in suc- 

 cession during fully two months of the late summer and 

 early autumn. They are vermilion red, variously marked 

 with white on the inner surface of the perianth-lobes and 

 on the tube formed by the enlargement of the bases of the 

 filaments which characterizes this genus. The beauty of 

 the coloring of the flowers is intensified, too, by the bright 

 purple of the anthers. 



Bessera elegans was introduced into Europe many years 

 ago, and has been described under two or three different 

 names based on slight variations in the color of the flowers. 

 Very little has been heard of it, however, in cultivation of 

 late years until a year or two ago, when one of the seeds- 

 men of this city succeeded in obtaining a supply of the 

 bulbs, which are now offered for sale. 



Our illustration is made from a plant furnished for the 

 purpose by Mr. Atkinson, gardener to John L. Gardener, 

 Esq., of Brookline, Massachusetts. 



New Orchids. 



CVPRIPEDIUM INSIGNE, VAR. LONGISEPALUM, Rolfe, is 0. dis- 

 tinct and very remarkable variety of the well-known C. insigne, 

 which appeared in a batch of the ordinary form imported by 

 Messrs. F. Sander & Co., of St. Albans. Its chief peculiarity 

 consists in the long and narrow sepals, which measure two 

 and a half inches in length by only one inch in width. The 

 dorsal one is also unspotted and with the white opical area re- 

 duced to the smallest dimensions. The lip and petals are normal 

 in character. — Gardeners' Chronicle, January 17th, 1891, p. 72. 



Cvpripedium X Celia, Rolfe. — This is a very pretty hybrid 

 raised in the collection of Wm. S. Kimball, Esq., of Rochester, 

 New York, by Mr. George Savage, probably between C. Sfti- 

 cerianum and C. tonsitm. The record of parentage was unfor- 

 tunately lost, but there is abundant evidence of the former in 

 the hybrid, while characters of the latter are apparently present 

 in the leaf, dorsal sepal and staminode, if not also in the petals, 

 and it is known that thetwospecies were hybridized together. — 

 Gardeners' Chronicle, January 24th, 1891, p. 104. 



Dendrobium niveum, Rolfe. — This is the Dendrobium Mac- 

 far lanei, Rchb., f., which, unfortunately, must bear a new 

 name, there being a species of the same name described seven 

 years earlier by F. Mueller, also from New Guinea, and be- 

 longing to the section Aporurn. D. niveum is a magnificent 

 species, with pure white flowers which measure four and a 

 half inches in diameter. It has again been introduced from 

 New Guinea, this time by Admiral Fairfax. — Gardeners' 

 Chronicle, January 24th, 1891, p. 104. 



Cvpripedium x Berenice, Rolfe, is a fine and handsome 

 hybrid, raised in the collection of Captain Vipan, of Wansford, 



from C. Roebclenii, a variety of C. Pliilippinense, fertilized with 

 the pollen of C. Lowii, and thus the first hybrid whose parents 

 both belong to the racemose-flowered group. It is generally 

 intermediate in character, and combines the characters of the 

 two species in a very pleasing manner. The petals are droop- 

 ing, narrow, over five inches long, and spirally twisted. — Gar- 

 deners Chronicle, January 31st, 1891, p. 136. 



Restrepia striata, Rolfe.— This is a most distinct and 

 pretty species, with the habit of R. antennifera and its allies. 

 Instead of being spotted, however, the lateral sepals are striped 

 with seven sharply defined maroon lines on a yellow ground, 

 the lines being a little narrower than the intervening spaces. It 

 exists in two or three collections, but I am not sure who first 

 introduced it. Schlim met with it and sent home a drawing, 

 but probably no living plants. Messrs. Hugh Low & Co. in- 

 troduced plants from the Cauca range, in New Granada, which 

 flowered in January, 1890, but at Glasnevin it flowered nearly 

 a year earlier, though whether from the same source I am un- 

 able to say. It is a very charming little species. — Gardeners' 

 Chronicle, January 31st, 1891, p. 137. 



Plant Notes. 



Some Recent Portraits. 



Monsieur Carriere, in the issue of the Revue Horticole for 

 February 1st, figures a Cherry under the name of Primus Ca- 

 ftuli, which is occasionalh r met with in French gardens. It is, 

 we suspect, only a form of Prunus serotina, and not the Cherry 

 of western tropical America and Mexico. Judged by the 

 figure, it resembles very much that form of Prunus serotina 

 which occurs in some parts of New Mexico and Arizona, and 

 which has usually been referred by American botanists to the 

 Mexican P. Capuli of De Candolle, which itself may be found 

 to be not specifically distinct from our common Wild Cherry 

 of the northern states. Unfortunately, sufficient material does 

 not exist in kerbaria to determine satisfactorily the specific 

 characters of the Mexican and Central American Cherry, which 

 may be expected, however, to differ from the tree found far- 

 ther south. 



A full-page illustration in the Gardeners' Chronicle issued on 

 February 14th is made from a photograph of a field of Daffo- 

 dils grown in the Scilly Isles, and gives a better idea of the 

 extent and importance of the cultivation there of these flowers 

 than any description could. It appears that in 1887 and 1888 

 as many as ten tons of flowers, principally Narcissi, were ex- 

 ported from Scilly into England. The business, however, has 

 increased, and is increasing very rapidly, and last year the 

 maximum export of flowers on any one day reached the total 

 of fifteen tons. Such a field of flowers as this picture portrays 

 would be worth a trip across the Atlantic to see. 



The colored plate of The Garden published on the 14th of 

 February is devoted to a beautiful Mexican Ipomaea, generally 

 known in gardens as Mina lobata, a plant remarkable for the 

 structure of the flower, the limb of the corolla being shaped 

 like an oblong five-cornered bag, the base being turned so 

 much upward by the tube as to be hidden from view. The 

 inflorescence is racemose, upright and arranged something in 

 the manner of that of the Borage family ; the flower-buds are 

 a bright rich crimson, changing from orange to pale yellow as 

 they open, and as the flowers appear at all stages at the same 

 time produce a charming and unusual effect. Mina lobata can 

 be started in a warm house in the spring, and then planted out 

 against a fence or arbor, and will then grow rapidly to the 

 height of twelve or fifteen feet by midsummer and flower pro- 

 fusely. The racemes are usually branched, twelve or eighteen 

 inches long, and sometimes produce thirty or forty flowers, 

 which are each about an inch long. Seeds are produced when 

 the season is long enough, and germinate readily, or the plant 

 can be propagated by cuttings. 



Foreign Correspondence. 

 London Letter. 



Auction Sales. — An enormous number of plants of all 

 kinds are now distributed in London by means of public auc- 

 tion sales. A few years ago the only salesman of note was 

 Mr. J. C. Stevens, whose weekly sale in his rooms near Covent 

 Garden Market was limited almost exclusively to Orchids, and 

 generally newly imported plants only. Now Mr. Stevens has 

 two or more sales of Orchids every week, and Messrs. Prothero 

 & Morris have at least the same number of Orchid sales in their 

 rooms at Cheapside. Besides these there are several sales every 

 week of bulbs, Palm-seeds, fruit-trees, Roses, herbaceous 



