41. 



PAXTON'S FLOWER GARDEN. 



Horticultural Society in 1882. It differs much in general appearance from all 

 other species of Columnea with which we have any acquaintance, having thick leathery 

 foliage, the arched leaves proceeding right and left from the stem immediately over each 

 other in two tiers. No doubt it will succeed under ordinary stove treatment as to tem- 

 perature, with peaty soil and moderate pot-room. 



Leaves closely set on each side of the stem, each twelve or eighteen inches in length, by two or three inches in 

 breadth, oblong acute, oblique at the base, arching downwards, glabrous, dull green on the upper surface, mottled 

 with translucent creamy orange on the lower siu'face, and with green veins. The flowers are borne on short racemes 

 proceeding from the stem, and each has a long yellow calyx one and a half to two inches long, prismatic, angled and 

 pointed at the tip.— Gardener's Chronicle, N.S., vol. xvii., p. 44. 



Eucalyptus globulus. LabillanUere. A vast tree, from Yan Dieman's Land, known 

 under the name of the "Blue Gum/'' Flowers white. Belongs to the Myrtleblooms 

 {Myrtaeec?). (Fig. 143.) 



Two huge blocks of the timber of this tree having been sent from Van Dieman's Land by Sir William Denison, for 

 exhibition in the Crystal Palace, our readers will be glad to know something of its history. Garden catalogues 

 say that it was introduced in 1810, and it is by no means rare among curious collections ; but the rapidity of its 

 growth soon renders it necessary to remove it. There is, however, no reason why it should not thrive out of doors 

 in the south-west of England and Ireland, where the climate is as mild as in Van Dieman's Land. It has angular 

 branches which, when young, droop, and are of a pale dull green colour. The leaves are firm, opaque, and unyielding, 

 as if stamped out of horn, ovate-lanceolate, long-stalked, and curved in the form of a sickle ; sometimes they are 

 wider at the base on one side than on the other, and, by a twist of the stalk, always stand with their edges vertically 

 instead of horizontally. The white flowers are almost two inches across when the stamens are expanded ; and are 

 produced singly or in clusters of threes ; sometimes, as in our figure, when the leaves fall off, the fruits seem as if in 

 spikes. The calyx is singularly knobby and rugged, with an angular tube, and a cover shaped like a depressed cone, or 

 like a convexity with a rude boss in the centre. These flowers are covered before expansion with a thick glaucous bloom. 

 The fruits are hard, woody, angular, rugged, knobby, urn-shaped bodies, with five openings into the cavities of the 

 capsule. 



The early discoverers of this tree reported it to attain the height of 150 feet ; but they were far within the truth, as 

 is shown by the blocks in the Great Exhibition, one of which near the base is 5 feet 7 inches in diameter ; and another, 

 cut from 134 feet above the first, is still 2 feet 10 inches in diameter. We learn from the proceedings of the Royal 

 Society of Van Dieman's Land (vol. L, p. 157) that, on the 11th of October, 1848 :— 



"A paper was read by Mr. H. Hull descriptive of a gigantic tree of the Gum tribe, ' occurring in a gorge on the 

 declivity of the Mount Wellington range near Tolosa, about six miles from Hobart Town.' Mr. Hull describes it as a 

 Blue Gum {Eucalyptus globulus), and says 'it stands close to the side of one of the small rivulets that issue from the 

 mountain, and is surrounded with dense forest and underwood. . ... It was measured with a tape, and foxmd to 

 be twenty-eight yards in circumference at the ground (more than nine yards in diameter), and twenty-six yards in 

 circumference at the height of six feet. The tree appeared sound except at one part, where the bark had opened, and 

 showed a line of decayed wood. The full height of the tree is estimated to be 330 feet.' " 



It is not improbable that the following extract from the same work (p. 165) relates to the same species, although it is 

 spoken of by another name : — 



"Mr. Milligan read the following note from the Rev. T. J. Ewing, of New Town, on the occurrence of some 

 unprecedentedly large specimens of the Swamp Gum (Eucalyptus Sp.) : — 



" 'New Town Parsonage, 19th March, 1849. 



" ' My deae Sie, — I went last week to see a very large tree, or rather two very large ones, that I had heard of since 

 1841, but which were not re-discovered until Monday last. As they are two of the largest— if not the largest— trees ever 

 measured, I have determined to send you an account of them, in order that a record may be preserved in any future 

 publication of the Royal Society. They are within three-quarters of a mile of each other, on a small stream, tributary 

 to the north-west Bay River, pretty far up on the ridge which separates its waters from those of Brown's River. They 

 are easily reached from the Huon foot-path, and are in a beautiful vale of sassafras and tree-ferns, and not in an 

 inaccessible gully like most of our gigantic trees. I have never before seen the tree-ferns growing in siich luxuriance, 

 bending over the stream like enormous cornucopias. The fire has never reached them, as they and the forest around 

 them plainly show j and every here and there you are puzzled on seeing a sassafras tree with a root on either side— one 



