4 SEEDS AND PLANTS IMPORTED. 



and not a forest tree its culture may be more easily accomplished 

 than will be the culture of the Burmese and Siamese trees. Should 

 this be the case the supply of this oil, which has proved so great a 

 remedy for leprosy, may be more quickly insured. The seeds have 

 been supplied by Mr. King-Church, the conservator of forests at 

 Freetown, Sierra Leone, Africa. 



In the Plant Introduction Garden at Miami one of the first in- 

 troductions of the Guatemalan avocado was planted in 1906, and 

 around it were planted other introductions, many of them belonging 

 to the West Indian type. Mr. Simmonds has found this Collins 

 variety a very good stock for our later introductions of Guatemalan 

 avocados, and one of the first of these seedlings to come into bearing 

 has yielded unusually good fruit and shows decided signs of being a 

 hybrid. It has attracted the attention of the growers in Florida, and 

 there has come a demand for it for orchard plantings. We have 

 entered it as a new introduction (No. 55509), calling it the Collinson. 



Although it is difficult to wean northerners from the vegetables of 

 their childhood, the scarcity in the summer of green vegetables in 

 the South has made those living there interested in getting forms 

 which will give tender leafy material for greens throughout the hot 

 months. The West Indian spinach (Amaranthus viridis, No. 55405) 

 from Montserrat, which Mr. Thompson, of Antigua, assures us pro- 

 duces leaves the size of dessert plates and which throughout the 

 recent severe drought on the island yielded greens twice a week for 

 the table, may be one of these new and valuable summer vegetables. 



Dr. Carlos Renson, of Salvador, the discoverer of a species of 

 Meibomia which he states is very resistant to prolonged drought and 

 is at the same time an excellent nitrogen gatherer, has sent in some 

 seeds of this new cover crop (Meibomia rensoni, No. 55446) for trial, 

 and it is to be hoped that it will do as well in other tropical regions 

 as it does with him. 



The wistaria has come to have so important a place in the orna- 

 mental horticulture of the temperate zone that we presume it is quite 

 too much to hope that any of the wistarialike climbers will ever 

 compete with it, although we must confess that Petraea volubilis as 

 grown in Florida runs it a close second. Sir Hugh Dixson, of Aber- 

 geldie, New South Wales, has sent in seeds of MiUettia megasperma 

 (No. 55565), which bears sweet-scented wistarialike flower clusters 

 of a darker hue than the Chinese wistaria and in his grounds has 

 proved to be a most beautiful decorative vine. 



The great similarity of the Atlantic coast of America to that of 

 eastern and even parts of western China makes the trial of a large 

 number of newly introduced species of ornamental perennials and 

 flowering shrubs from Szechwan of unusual interest. Through the 

 kindness of A. K. Bulley, of Neston, England, it is hoped to 

 place in the hands of American amateurs a large collection of new 

 and as yet unidentified species of Anemone, Campanula, Caragana, 

 Clematis, Delphinium, Deutzia, Euonymus, Fritillaria, Gentiana, 

 Hemerocallis, Iris, Lilium, Lonicera, Rhododendron, and others 

 which have been gathered together by his collector, Dr. F. Kingdon 

 Ward (Nos. 55253 to 55366). 



The hibiscus in its various forms is one of the real glories of the 

 Tropics, and through the work of breeding and selection of certain 



