138 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 161. 



mountains of northern Japan. It might, therefore, be ex- 

 pected to prove hardy anywhere in the United States. " It is," 

 he says, "a more rapid and vigorous grower than the former 

 species. I found some very fine vines of this kind in the 

 lower mountains in the northern part of Iwati prefecture, 

 which is well up toward the northern point of the main island. 

 One vine especially attracted attention by its size and load of 

 fruit. It grew in a spot of rich soil, mostly leaf-mold, by the 

 side of a spring in the edge of a wood where it rambled over 

 a thick growth of tall bushes and small trees, within an area 

 of a square rod." As this plant was known to Siebold who, 

 with Zuccarini, published a figure of it in the Flora of Japan, 

 it is certainly curious that the horticultural collectors who 

 have ransacked Japan so thoroughly of late years have failed 

 to send home any seeds of a plant which, if we are to judge 

 of its value by that of its relative, is likely to be of first rate 

 importance in our gardens, especially if it proves more fruit- 

 ful than the better known A. quinata. 



Foreign Correspondence. 

 London Letter. 



Lindenia. — It is now six years since this monthly publication 

 was started by the Messrs. Linden, of Brussels. It is devoted 

 exclusively to Orchids, of which 272 pictures, mostly well exe- 

 cuted, have already appeared. An English edition has been 

 started this year, of which part II. has lately been published. 

 With such powerful and established competitors as Warner 

 and Williams' Orchid Album and Reichenbachia, besides The 

 Garden and the Botanical Magazine, Messrs. Lindens' venture 

 will have to be smart to succeed in England. Certainly nothing 

 could be better than these first two parts, both with regard to 

 the excellence of the drawing and colors of the plates and the 

 interest of the letterpress. Orchidists are to be congratulated 

 upon the number and quality of the periodicals now devoted 

 to illustrating and describing all the best garden Orchids. The 

 plants figured in the parts of the English Lijidenia already 

 published are as follows : Cattleya Rex, which is supposed to 

 be a white-petaled C. Dowiana, and which is a most beautiful 

 plant, is represented in the plate ; Cochlioda Noezliana, a de- 

 lightful Orchid, similar in habit and flowers to C. vulcanica 

 (better known as Odontoglossicm vulcanicum), differing in hav- 

 ing bright scarlet flowers, with a purple-tipped column. I 

 may note here that at the auction sale to-day the plants of 

 this Orchid offered by Messrs. Shuttleworth & Co., although 

 small and newly imported, realized as much as ten guineas 

 each ; Peresteria aspera, shown as having the pseudo-bulbs of 

 P. elata, and a short, drooping raceme of fleshy, cupped 

 flowers, not unlike those of Acineta densa in size and 

 shape, but colored tawny yellow, with numerous reddish 

 spots. Cattleya Warocqueana, var. amethystina, the flowers of 

 which are as large as those of the largest C. gigas, and colored 

 deep purplish rose, with a large amethyst-colored lip, deep 

 yellow in the throat ; Catasetum saccatum is beautifully figured, 

 and is described as " a splendid species, one of the largest of 

 the genus. The sepals are over two and a quarter inches long, 

 marbled and almost suffused with purple brown on a light- 

 green ground. The petals are a little shorter and similar in 

 color. . . . The lip is a remarkable organ, three-lobed, 

 strongly fimbriate, green suffused with brown, white round 

 the mouth of the saccate spur." Cattleya granulosa, var. 

 Buyssoniana, remarkable for its uniformly cream-yellow sepals 

 and petals and its white and crimson labellum. Odontoglos- 

 sum Clasianum, a large-flowered form of 0. crispum, with 

 numerous large, red-brown blotches. It is described as a prob- 

 able natural hybrid between 0. crispum luteopurpureum, but 

 on what ground is not clear. The eighth plate represents a 

 pretty mass of the elegant little Phalmnopsis Lowii. Except 

 the Phalcenopsis, all these plants are the introductions of the 

 Linden Company. 



Horticultural Appliances. — At the Crystal Palace, Syden- 

 ham, an exhibition of considerable interest to gardeners was 

 opened on the 3d, and will continue till the 31st of March. It 

 is devoted to greenhouses, heating apparatus, various tools — 

 in fact, to all kinds of garden furniture and machinery. On the 

 whole the exhibits do not comprise anything of exceptional 

 novelty for the professional gardener or well-informed ama- 

 teur. Nevertheless, it cannot but' prove useful to the thou- 

 sands who daily visit this popular resort, and who are more or 

 less interested in garden work, but are ignorant of the latest 

 improvements in the way of tools and garden appliances gen- 

 erally. For this reason exhibitions of this kind are desirable 

 wherever horticulture is general. 



Lilium Harrisii. — The Bermuda Lily has become of enor- 

 mous importance to flower-growers in England. The market- 

 gardeners in the London districts alone import millions of it 

 yearly. In one nursery some hundreds of thousands are 

 planted every year, and are treated so as to come on in batches, 

 so that the flowers are available from March to October. In 

 Mr. Iceton's nursery at Putney I saw lately house after house 

 filled with this Lily, while in frames and beds were many thou- 

 sands more in various stages of growth. The bulbs had been 

 planted singly in five-inch pots in strong loam. The stem on 

 each bulb of the many thousands which will open their flowers 

 in about a fortnight, so as to be ready by Easter, was as thick 

 as a man's thumb, from four to five feet high, leafy down to 

 the base, and crowned with a cluster of plump buds. I counted 

 the buds upon many of the stems, and found the average to be 

 six flowers per bulb. With the market-growers it does not pay 

 to attempt to use the bulbs of this Lily a second year ; they are 

 therefore sold for a mere song or destroyed after having flow- 

 ered. The three Lilies generally grown by the London market 

 nurserymen are L. candidum, L. eximium and L. Harrisii. 

 Grown as Mr. Iceton grows them — at first plunged in fibre or 

 ashes outside, then removed to unheated frames, and from 

 thence to warm, moist, light houses, where they stand pot 

 thick, their roots saturated, their heads almost touching the 

 glass — they are an immense success. 



Kentias. — The most popular decorative Palms in England 

 are the several species from Lord Howe Island, which were 

 originally described as Kentias by Mueller, and subsequently 

 altered to Howea by Beccari. In gardens, however, they are 

 still generally known as Kentia Forsteriana and K. Belmore- 

 ana. Besides these names there are K. Mooreana, K. rupicola, 

 and K. australis, but the plants in gardens which bear them 

 appear to be merely varieties of one or the other of the two 

 first named. These are grown in hundreds of thousands by 

 London nurserymen, and are sold in all sizes, from plants a 

 foot high in three-inch pots, to big specimens fifteen feet high. 

 They are superior to most other Palms, from the fact that 

 their leaves are not easily injured, and they remain on the 

 plants for many years, so that -a specimen fifteen feet high 

 often still retains the leaves which it had when small. They 

 are not injured by being huddled closely together, so long as 

 they get plenty of moisture and warmth. This gives them 

 great value as plants for temporary decoration, and their seeds 

 are now imported by the hundredweight; many of them being 

 disposed of at the auction rooms. 



There exists some confusion among growers with respect 

 to these two fine Palms, many being of opinion that they are 

 merely varieties of one species. The following extract from 

 a report on Lord Howe Island by Mr. J. Duff, of the Sydney 

 Botanic Gardens, may throw some light upon the matter. He 

 says : 



" Baron Mueller, in the fifth volume of his ' Fragmenta,' de- 

 scribes four distinct species of Palms indigenous to Howe 

 Island, while Mr. Bentham, in the 'Flora Australiensis,' only 

 enumerates three species, stating that he finds ' no difference 

 in the male flowers and fruit of K. Forsteriana (the Thatch 

 Palm) and K. Belmoreana (the Curly Palm), and that their dis- 

 tinctness remains to be ascertained.' Both Palms flower ex- 

 actly alike, i. e., they produce their flower-spikes generally 

 from the axils of the lowest row of leaves, but occasionally 

 young, undeveloped flower-spikes spring from the axils of the 

 leaves above them. The seeds [fruits] of the Curly Palm are 

 oval and a greenish yellow color when ripe, while those of the 

 Thatch Palm taper to a point at both ends and are dark crim- 

 son when mature. 



" The chief specific distinctions, however, are : The Curly 

 Palm bears its flower-spikes singly, which average five to six 

 feet in length, while those of the Thatch Palm consist of five 

 spikes in a row, united together at the base, of an average 

 length of three to four feet. 



" The fronds and pinnae of the Curly Palm are recurved at 

 the apex and the pinnae are nearly erect at the base, the Thatch 

 Palm having less recurved, darker green fronds and broader, 

 pendulous pinnae, which distinctions are observable even in 

 the small seedling plants. 



"The Curly Palm is the most abundant and wide-spread 

 species, as it extends from the beach to an elevation of about 

 1,200 feet, while the Thatch Palm is confined chiefly to the 

 beach. 



"At an elevation of about i.ooofeet the large Mountain or 

 Umbrella Palm (Kentia Canterbury 'ana) is met with growing 

 in patches from this height to the summit of the mountains, 

 to which the small Mountain Palm (AT. Moorei) is also con- 

 fined." 



