8 



PAXTON'S FLOWER GARDEN. 



Odontoglossum vexillaeiuai eubellum. A very handsome form of 0. vexillarhim, 

 with short stout pseudo-bulbs, and robust foliage. It seems to be quite distinct in its 

 habit of blooming in the autumn, keeping on up to the end of the year. It also differs 

 from such as have been hitherto in cultivation, inasmuch as all the plants are exactly 

 alike in the size and colour of the flowers, whilst in the ordinary species scarcely any two 

 are the same. The flowers are of medium size, the colour warm pink. Mr. Bull 

 received a First Class Certificate for it at the Royal Horticultural Society's meeting in 

 October, 1881. 



Osbeckia eosteata. A handsome melastomad with rosy-pink flowers, produced in loose 

 erect spikes at the extremities of the shoots. The plant comes from Bengal, consequently 

 requires stove heat to grow it. After being introduced it would seem to have been lost until 

 again obtained by Messrs. E. G. Henderson and Son, of the Pine Apple Nursery, with 

 whom it flowered in the autumn of 1880. Ordinary stove treatment will no doubt be all 

 it requires. 



A rather slender sparingly-branched herbaceous shrub two to four feet high, glabrous, hairy, or hispid. Stem 

 soft, strict, sometimes as thick as the finger at the base and four-winged, four-angled above, side-branches if any 

 usually long and slender. Leaves three to ten inches long, opposite and three-nately whorled, subsessile, or with 

 short thick petiole, elliptic-oblong-ovate or lanceolate, acuminate, quite entire or crenulate ; transverse nerves 

 distinct. Flowers two to two and a half inches in diameter, four-merous, in loose terminal corymbs with four- 

 angled peduncles and pedicels ; bracts ovate, caducous. Calyx half to nearly an inch long ; tube with an inflated 

 base, glabrous or stellately pubescent ; limb with four ovate-acute segments. Petals nearly orbicular, with a waved 

 margin. Anthers subequal, with long curved beaks. Ovary with a glabrous or hispid crown. Fruiting calyx 

 glabrous, or clotbed sometimes densely with very long stellate hairs, giving it a shaggy appearance.— Botanical 

 Magazine, 6575. 



Berbeeis sinensis. This is the most elegant habited of all the cultivated species of 

 Berberry, being even more graceful than the beautiful B. stenopliylla . It is far from being 

 a new plant, having been long introduced, but it is not near so well known as it deserves to 

 be. With the view of bringing it more to the knowledge of cultivators, we have noticed it 

 here. It comes from China, and is quite hardy. In addition to the beauty of its drooping 

 branches laden with small yellow flowers in spring, the bright red berries that follow are 

 remarkably handsome. 



A much-branched glabrous bush four to six feet high, branches sub-erect ; branchlets long, slender, pendulous, 

 spines in pairs or tbrees. Leaves fascicled on the branches, one to two inches long, very variable in size and 

 shape in each fascicle, coriaceous, green not glaucous, from linear-obovate to spathulate, obtiise acute or apiculate, 

 quite entire or rarely sparingly spinulose-toothed (strongly so in the young plants) ; nerves faint. Flowers in very 

 slender long-peduncled pendulous many-flowered racemes two to three inches long ; each on a slender pedicel of one- 

 fourth to half an inch long, with a minute deciduous bract at its base. Perianth globose, very small, under one-fourth 

 of an inch in diameter, pale yellow. Outer sepals minute orbicular ; next series cymbiform. Petals smaller, inner 

 series rather truncate. Berries one-third to half an inch long, narrowly ellipsoid, rounded at the base and tip, bright 

 red, one to two seeded; stigmas small, quite sessile.— Botanical Magazine., 6573. 



