August 19, 1891.] 



Garden and Forest. 



389 



ferences. The sepals and petals are light green, with numer- 

 ous blackish spots. Although borne on the same raceme, the 

 females expanded several days in advance of the males, thus 

 pointing to earlier development in this sex. — Gardeners' 

 Chronicle, July nth, p. 36. 



Cirrhopetalum Thonarsii, Lindl. — Although described 

 nearly seventy years ago, and the original species of the genus, 

 this rare Mauritian plant has only recently appeared in culti- 

 vation, for it is now evident that the Philippine plant which 

 Lindley thought identical, and which has borne the name in 

 gardens for so many years, is a different species. Plants were 

 sent to Kew by C. W. Bewsher, Esq., of the Oriental Bank, 

 Mauritius, together with other native Orchids. One plant 

 which has now bloomed has light yellow flowers, without any 

 spots. A second plant, believed to be spotted with red, has 

 not yet flowered. — Gardeners' Chronicle, July 18th, p. 69. 



Cycnoches chlorochilon, Klotzsch, $ and Q. — As in a 

 previous case, it is the female flower which is new to gardens, 

 the other sex having long been known. A female flower has 

 appeared in the collection of Monsieur Houzeau de Lehaie, 

 member of the Chamber of Representatives, of Hyon, near 

 Mons, Belgium. It is larger and more fleshy than the male, 

 with broader sepals and petals, 'and the crest of the lip much 

 more obtuse. The ovary is also more than twice as thick and 

 more strongly grooved, and the column scarcely half as long, 

 at least four times as thick, without pollinia, but with a pair of 

 large fleshy wings on either side of the well-developed stigma. 

 The color is identical in the two sexes, which are thus far less 

 dissimilar than in most other species of this singular genus. — 

 Gardeners' Chronicle, July 1 8th, p. 69. 



Odontoglossum Bergmani, L. Lind. — A handsome Odon- 

 toglossum in the way of O. luteopurpureum, but with chocolate 

 spots on a white ground. It was awarded a first-class certifi- 

 cate of merit at a meeting of the Orchideene, of Brussels, on 

 April 12th last, when it was exhibited by Monsieur Bergman. 

 It is suggested that it may be a variety of O. luteopitrpurenm, 

 but I consider it a natural hybrid with 0. crispum. — Lindcnia, 

 t. 286. 



Kew. R- A. Rolfe. 



Plant Notes. 



Phalaenopsis Schilleriana. 



THE numerous species of Phalaenopsis that have been 

 introduced within the past thirty years are far from 

 being as satisfactory as this fine old favorite, and, indeed, 

 those that were known previously lack some of its best 

 points. The utility of the plant is found in the profusion 

 and lasting quality of its attractive flowers, and in the 

 handsome character of its variegated foliage. Some 

 descriptive and cultural particulars have already appeared 

 in this volume of Garden and Forest, on page 117. 



P. Schilleriana was introduced from Manilla in 1858 by 

 Mr. Consul Schiller, a gentleman who had a famous collec- 

 tion of Orchids in Hamburg at that time, and in compli- 

 ment to whom this species was named by Professor 

 Reichenbach. This importation consisted of some thirty 

 plants, only one of which, however, survived, and flowered 

 at Hamburg two years later. In 1862 it flowered for the 

 first time in England, at Broomfield, the place of the Mr. 

 Robert Warner famous in Orchid history. Mr. Warner's 

 plant seems to have been collected privately, and its native 

 locality was not disclosed at the time. An idea of the 

 progress which has been made in the search after new 

 Orchids — of the devastation wrought by collectors, some 

 will have it — may be obtained from the statement that 

 only five kinds of Phalaenopsis were known in England 

 when P. Schilleriana had been introduced; between 

 thirty and forty are now being cultivated in that country. 



Many fine specimens of P. Schilleriana have been grown 

 in England, and in late years a few have been produced 

 in this country and Canada. A plant sent from London 

 by Mr. Warner to the Russian International Exhibition, 

 held at St. Petersburg in May, 1869, bore 120 fully de- 

 veloped flowers atone time. Two excellent plants, grown 

 in the collections of Frederick Scholes, Esq., of Brooklyn, 

 New York, were figured in the Gardeners' Chronicle of 

 April 28th, 1888, and noted in the first volume of Garden 

 and Forest. Mr. Scholes attributed his success with this 

 plant to a liberal use of cow-manure. 



The specimen, from a photograph of which the accom- 

 panying illustration was prepared (p. 390), flowered at the 

 gardens of John Hoskins, Esq., Toronto, Canada, in 1890. 

 It carried about seventy flowers. The same plant had 129 

 flowers this season, all fully in bloom at the same time. 

 It is grown in a well-lighted stove in which the atmos- 

 phere is kept constantly moist by means of a hot-water 

 tank in the centre. In other particulars the treatment does 

 not differ from that observed in other establishments. An 

 engraving of a plant at Melchet Court, England, the 

 most extraordinary Phalaenopsis of which we have any 

 record, was given in the Gardeners' Chronicle, August 

 7th, 1875. This plant measured seven feet in height and 

 five feet through, bearing flowers to the number of 378. 

 When sold at auction a few months later it realized a sum 

 exceeding $150. 



Cambridge, Mass. 



M. Barker. 



Some Recent Portraits. 



The August issue of the Botanical Magazine contains 

 figures of Faraday a sple.ndida (t. 7187), a handsome tropical 

 climbing plant, a native of Queensland, and dedicated to 

 the physicist Michael Faraday. The plant is described as 

 conspicuous by its handsome bright green foliage and 

 copious panicles of very fragrant snowy white flowers 

 which appeared at Kew for the first time in September of 

 last year. An allied species, F. Papuana, of New Guinea, 

 is also in cultivation at Kew, but has not yet flowered ; 

 Cypripedium Californicum (t. 7188), the handsome Califor- 

 nia Lady's-slipper which was figured in the first volume of 

 Garden and Forest (page 281) ; Pleurothallis immersa (t. 

 7189), a New Granada Orchid, with small dirty brown flow- 

 ers borne in elongated racemes rising above the leaves. It is 

 a plant of considerable botanical interest, although garden- 

 ers generally will be inclined to pass it by. Synanlherias 

 sylvalica (t. 7190), a small East Indian aroid, is another 

 plant which is curious rather than beautiful from the "hor- 

 ticultural point of view ; Rehmannia rupeslris (t. 7 1 9 1 ), the 

 representative of a genus of Scruphulariacece, now known 

 to consist of six or seven species, all natives of China, 

 Formosa and Japan. It was discovered by Mr. A. Henry, 

 in the province of Hupeh, growing only in almost inac- 

 cessible places on the faces of mountain-cliffs. It is a 

 semi-prostrate plant, densely coated with whitish wool 

 and having solitary axillary flowers, with long yellow tubes 

 marked with purple on the inner surface of the limb. Of its 

 horticultural value very little can be said, as the specimen 

 which flowered at Kew, and which had been raised from 

 seed taken from one of Dr. Henry's herbarium specimens, 

 died as soon as it had flowered. 



Cultural Department. 



Russian and Polish Pears. 



I BEGAN to try these Pears with many misgivings, but I 

 think better of them every year. The hardiest of our old 

 kinds I have been obliged to give up, after long and repeated 

 trials ; even our mildest winters blackened their new wood. 

 Rather colder winters killed back nearly all the new growth, 

 while one of our "rippers" killed every tree to the snow-line. 

 There is rarely an interval between these extreme seasons 

 long enough to enable us to see any fruit ; and after twenty 

 years of such experiments I gave it up beaten, having gathered 

 just one ripe pear — from Jackson, a New Hampshire variety. 

 When a fruit named for Old Hickory had to succumb, I felt 

 justified in abandoning the field. 



But before this end of the struggle I had received from my 

 kind friends, Professor Budd, of Iowa, and the lamented 

 Charles Gibb, of Quebec, a lot of cions from their then recent 

 .importations. From these, worked close to the ground on 

 Vermont-grown stocks, I grew quite a lot of trees of many va- 

 rieties. Professor Budd also sent me a few young trees from 

 his earliest home propagations, so that I started almost even 

 with them in my testings of their hardiness, and I have now a 

 fine collection of these trees from six to twenty feet high, not 

 one of which has lost a bud. Even Sapieganka, decidedly the 



