28 
ROYAL HORTICtJLTUUAL SOCIETY. 
be protested against if Lilies were either Ferns or Orchids. The 
two genera to which I refer are Draccena and Cordyline, some 
members of which everyone knows, and everyone who has a con- 
servatory cultivates. The Dragon Tree of the Canaries is a plant 
about which everyone has read, and the great Dragon Tree of 
Orotava, with a trunk 70 feet high and 50 feet in circumference, 
whicli has an authenticated history going back to the commence- 
ment of the fifteenth century, is a prominent item in every bead-roll 
of vegetable wonders. Scarcely less celebrated, though of course not 
known so long in Europe, is the invaluable " Ti" Tree of the Polyne- 
sian islanders, Cordyline terminalis. Its uses are almost as manifold 
as those of a Palm. In the Sandwich, Society, and Fiji groups it serves 
largely for food. The tuberous root, which often weighs from ten to 
fourteen pounds, after being baked on heated stones, is said to re- 
semble closely stick-liquorice in taste and sweetness. Bruised^ 
mixed with water, and fermented, it forms an intoxicating drink ; 
distilled, an ardent spirit is readily obtained ; boiled before fermenta- 
tion, a rich syrup capable of being used as sugar is the result. The 
leaves furnish excellent fodder for rabbits, goats, sheep, and cattle, 
and are used for this purpose by European settlers. It is often 
grown for the sake of its ornamental leaves ; and the stems, stuck 
into the ground in a row, soon run up into a firm fence for an en- 
closure. These are the two best and oldest-known members of the 
two genera. JS'ow as to their botanical distinctions. The struc- 
tural difi'erence between them is as follows : — In Draccena there is 
only a single ovule in each of the three cells of the ovary ; in Cor- 
dyline there are a great many — eight to fourteen, say the books. 
Of course in both there is a tendency for the ovules to become 
abortive without ripening into seeds ; but so far as my experience of 
the Ti Trees goes, there are never less than two or three seeds in a 
cell, whilst in the Dragon Trees there cannot be more than one, and 
frequently one or two out of the three cells become obliterated, as is 
the rule in the Oak or Horse Chestnut. In Dracmna the stigma exists 
iu the form of a head like the button of a fencing-foil, with three 
little blunt lobes, as in the Lilies. In Cordyline it takes the form 
of three small hooks like the top of a shepherd's crook or the handle 
of a walking-stick, as in the Fritillaries. So much for differences in 
the actual structure of the flower ; next for habit. In Cordyline thQ 
flowers are placed singly on the rachis of the panicle, each sur- 
rounded by a regular little involucre, formed of the membranous 
bract that subtends the pedicel on the side farthest from the axis, 
and inside the pedicel a pair of bracteoles, just like the bract in size 
