412 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 184. 



New or Little-known Plants. 



Protea nana.* 



ALTHOUGFI this plant was cultivated at Kew in 

 1787, whither it had been sent from the Cape by the 

 collector Masson, it had disappeared from cultivation, and 

 had been forgotten long ere it was reintroduced to Kew, 

 where it flowered in a cool greenhouse two years ago. 

 Fifty years ago there were about thirty species of Protea 

 included among popular greenhouse plants in England ; 

 now one may safely say there is not one, the few really 

 under cultivation being only in botanical collections. 

 Writing of these plants exactly ten years ago, Sir Joseph 

 Hooker observes : " The Cape Proteacece, the favorites of 

 our grandfathers, may be said to have gone out of cultiva- 

 tion, so completely have they been replaced by other tribes 

 of more or less deservedly popular, but neither more inter- 

 esting nor more curious, plants. . . . This neglect of a 

 whole genus of most conspicuous plants, which forms a 

 grand feature of one of England's greatest colonies, is not 

 due to want of beauty, for some of them are among the 

 handsomest of plants, whether for size, form, or color of 

 inflorescence ; and would carry away the first prize at any 

 horticultural show. ... Of these, however, the present, 

 and even past, generation of horticulturists know abso- 

 lutely nothing. Nevertheless, that these and many other 

 plants requiring like treatment will be reintroduced, and 

 will be the wonders of the shows for many successive 

 seasons, is as certain as that they were once the glories of 

 the old flue-heated houses that our forefathers called stoves, 

 in which Orchids quickly perished, and Banksias and Pro- 

 teas throve magnificently." 



Although this prediction has not yet been realized, at 

 least two species of Protea have recently been exhibited 

 in London and won considerable attention, namely, P. 

 cynarioides, which some thought was a glorified Artichoke, 

 and P. nana, the species represented in the illustration on 

 page 413. The plant is scarcely two feet in height, the 

 branches are hard and wiry when mature, the leaves are 

 rather rigid and pine-like, and the nodding terminal flower- 

 heads are in the form of shallow cups, two inches in diam- 

 eter, and composed of several rows of rigid petaloid bracts, 

 the lower ones colored green, the upper deep crimson. The 

 true flowers are packed closely together in the form of a 

 disk, which occupies the greafer part of the cup inside and 

 is colored yellow, the exserted stigmas being pink. The 

 flower-heads remain about a month in perfection. 



The Kew plant" is nine years old, having been raised 

 from seeds received from Professor MacOwen, of Cape 

 Town, in 1882. It has been grown in an airy, sunny 

 greenhouse, and is planted in very sandy peat. The one 

 great danger to cultivated Proteads is excessive watering, 

 and to guard against this it is found to be a good plan, in 

 the case of delicate species, to place the pot in which the 

 plant is growing inside a larger one, filling up the space 

 between with silver sand: The latter is always kept moist. 

 By this means we have been able to keep and grow such 

 Proteads as the Cape Silver Tree {Leucadendron argenteum), 

 Protea nana and other delicate species. Beside the two 

 already named, the following Proteas are now in cultiva- 

 tion at Kew, P. longifolia, P. marginata, P. grandi- 

 flora,P. mellifera and several undetermined species. These 

 plants are easily raised from seeds, which may be ob- 

 tained in quantity from the Cape. I have seen huge 

 bushes of P. speciosa growing among the rocks near 

 Grahamstown, and as thickly clothed with large heads of 

 rosy red, deliciously fragrant, cup-like flowers, as a big speci- 

 men Rhododendron is with flowers when it is at its best. 

 P. cynarioides is very abundant in some parts of the east- 

 ern division of the Cape. It grows to a height of from 

 three to five feet, and, when in flower, its enormous rosy 

 red cups, not unlike the heads of Artichokes in size and 

 shape, are such an attraction that the colonists are wont to 



* Bot. Mag., t. 7095 ; Smith Exot. Bot., I., t. 44 (P. rosacea). 



devote a special holiday to a picnic among the "honey- 

 pots," as the flowers of this Protea and others are called. 

 Proteas certainly are deserving of the attention of every 

 cultivator interested in plants remarkable not only for 

 beauty of flower but also for singularity of form and 

 color. 



There are about sixty species of Protea known, and, 

 with the exception of one or two found in Abyssinia, 

 they are all natives of south Africa. 



Kew. 



W. Watson. 



Foreign Correspondence. 



London Letter. 



LONDON is now supposed to be taking its holiday, 

 _, and the exodus of the rich patrons of horticulture 

 to their country-seats has a marked effect upon the attend- 

 ance at the metropolitan gatherings. But the actual 

 workers in horticulture know no rest, for the seasons of 

 the various classes of popular plants and fruits succeed 

 and overlap each other without interval. At the last fort- 

 nightly meeting of the Royal Horticultural Society at 

 Westminster, now the centre of horticultural activity, no 

 one would have supposed that it was holiday-time to see 

 such an assemblage from all parts of our little country, for 

 one could hold converse with a hundred of the best and 

 most representative men in every branch of gardening, 

 both scientific and practical. 



The popular flower of the season is still the Carnation, 

 which seems to take a firmer hold of the public taste year 

 after year. This season its flowering time has been much 

 lengthened owing to the dull and rainy weather of the 

 past month. The favorite flower of the Rothschilds is now 

 the flower of everybody, and since raisers have turned 

 their efforts upon the extension of the sturdy border sorts, 

 with well-defined self-colors, both delicate and brilliant, 

 there is not a good garden in the country where the Carna- 

 tion does not receive special attention, just as the Rose, 

 Chrysanthemum and Dahlia do. While the strictly florists' 

 type has not been improved upon from what it was thirty 

 years ago, we have now such a multitude of self-colors of 

 sturdy constitution that it is quite a business to select even 

 the best twenty sorts. Among new sorts shown by Turner, 

 of Slough, some of which captivated the specialists, my 

 choice would be one named Queen of Bedders, which not 

 only has large full flowers of a soft crimson, but has such 

 vigorous grass and is so dwarf that it is exceptionally valu- 

 able for the open border. This variety, of which a dozen 

 large bunches were exhibited, took, in its class, the first prize 

 by an amateur for "flowers cut from plants which have 

 been wintered in the open garden and staged without 

 'dressing,' and exactly as they were cut from the plants." 

 This class is quite an innovation and in the right direction, 

 the object being to develop excellence as decorative flow- 

 ers in the open border and to encourage varieties that yield 

 abundant heads of flowers. The schedule, moreover, stipu- 

 lates that the flowers are to be shown in bunches, with their 

 own foliage and buds. No bands or ties round the calyx 

 are allowable, and no wire-supports or paper-collars are 

 allowed, and a split calyx is a disqualification of the bloom. 

 This is a long list of restrictions, but the Queen of Bedders 

 fulfills all the conditions, and, no doubt, it is the forerunner 

 of a race that will satisfy the most exacting. A few years 

 ago such a high standard would have been thought wholly 

 unattainable, but now we are developing a dwarf race 

 which needs no special attention to make their flowers 

 respectable. 



The flower-loving people welcome this change from 

 artificiality to naturalness, not only in Carnations but in 

 other flowers, for we are gradually throwing aside the 

 conventionalism of the old school at the metropolitan 

 shows. I have mentioned only one sort of Carnation of 

 the multitude that were shown, and I doubt if your readers 

 would care to have a full list, but a dozen of the ver)r best 



