52 



JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



In all true wild species of Narcissi other than X. Bulbo- 

 codiuni and X. Pseudo-Xarcissus, the anthers are all more or 

 less distinctly bi-seriate, and spring from quite near the mouth 

 of the tube. All the hybrids are practically intermediate, 

 having their flower-tubes longer and narrower than in the 

 Daffodil, and broader and shorter than those of true Xarcissi ; 

 and the anthers are usually in one series even although now 

 and then there may be some inequality in the insertion, or 

 springing free of the filaments from the flower-tube. 



Taken with other quite evident but less easily described 

 blending of specific characters, this medial arrangement of the 

 anthers is amply sufficient to distinguish any hybrid between 

 any two species in the genus. To the careful student of living 

 and growing Xarcissi there is a " look " about hybrids by which 

 he can quite easily guess at, or prophesy, their parentage ; but it 

 is an advantage from a botanical point of view to find absolute 

 differences of structure and formation in the true hybrids which 

 make themselves evident and recognisable even when the flowers 

 are dried and pressed for the herbarium. 



Xames. 



When we come to the naming of the Xarcissi we touch a 

 very complicated and puzzling question. We have at present 

 the anomaly in our garden nomenclature of plants of possibly 

 the same parentage passing under different sectional names. 

 Take the numerous hybrids between the Poet's Xarcissus and 

 the Daffodil, for example, including all the variations of X. 

 incomparabilis, Barrii, and some of the Burbidgei's, raised by 

 Herbert, Leeds, Backhouse, and others, in gardens. Most of the 

 Barrii' s are simply X. incomparabilis, and most of the true 

 Burbidgei's are merely seminal phases of N. poeticus, the 

 Daffodil parentage being almost, if not quite, obliterated or 

 absent. There are again the wild hybrid X'. Bernardi's of the 

 Pyrenees, and finally the single reversion of the double " Orange 

 Phoenix," or "Mary Anderson," which with X. Barrii " Sensa- 

 tion," and some other English seedlings, is practically the same 

 as X. Bernardi. Here we have three or four sectional names 

 for plants that may be produced by the selfsame pod of seed ; 

 and I think our Xarcissus Committee should, to prevent further 

 confusion, re-arrange all these hybrids under the older and most 



