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JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



rounded shape, still further embellish with their pleasing dis- 

 position the perfect symmetry of the flower. The general colour 

 is a soft cherry-red, more or less striped with carmine on the 

 edges ; the lower segments are covered with a purple-scarlet 

 blotch, surrounded, as it were, with a profusion of small drops 

 of blood on a white ground, and numerous white dots on a rosy 

 ground. The flowers are quite open, and look you straight in 

 the face. 



Among the other varieties we may mention P. Duchartre, a 

 dwarf plant, carrying enormous copper-red flowers, the lower 

 segments being completely covered with dark maroon dots ; 

 Comte Horace de Choiseul, orange-red, with purple and yellow 

 markings ; M. Hardy, crimson or very dark carmine, with 

 purple blotches and yellow dots ; Maurice de Vilmorin, a singular 

 flower, where every sort of shade is to be found in a mixture, 

 slate-coloured blue with a violet hue, the blotches pointed with 

 purple, blood-red, and yellow — an advance towards the blue. 



A single glance at the flowers of G. nanccianus makes one 

 wonder to see how much they differ from the species from which 

 they originated. Gladiolus Saundcrsii is a dwarf plant with 

 ■weak stems and hooded blooms, humbly bent towards the 

 ground. Gladiolus nanccianus possesses strong, upright spikes 

 and fully expanded flowers, boldly looking upwards. Saunders' 

 species is of a pale vermilion colour ; the Nancy Gladioli are 

 bright-coloured flowers, in which red, crimson, carmine, and 

 even bluish shades are met with, and it impossible to say to what 

 extent this variation of the colour may not be pursued. 



M. Froebel, of Zurich, offered for sale last year, under the 

 name of Gladiolus turiccnsis, a variety raised from a cross 

 between Gladiolus Saundcrsii var. supcrba and G. ganda- 

 veusis. From the description which was published of it last 

 autumn in an English horticultural paper it must be a fine, 

 vigorous plant. Although we applied to M. Froebel, praying him 

 to send us a bulb of his novelty, we received nothing, and are 

 therefore not able to describe it as it probably deserves. 



Some words, in conclusion, about the cultivation of Gladioli. 

 I shall net speak of the manner of growing and forcing early 

 varieties, in pots or frames, which the Guernsey and Jersey 

 specialists are managing so well ; nor of that of the Gandavensis 

 hybrids, which is, I imagine, perfectly well known here ; and 



