THE FLORAL MAGAZINE. 



NEW SERIES.] 



MAY, 1876. 



[No. 53. 



EXHIBITIONS. 



At the meeting of the Royal Horticultural Society, 

 held on April the 5th last, a first-class certificate was 

 awarded to Mr. Henley, gardener to Spencer Brunton, 

 Esq., of Beckenham, for Odontoglossum cirrhosum, a 

 most interesting plant, which will probably become as 

 popular as 0. Alexandra. It is as free growing and 

 as free flowering as that species, the plant exhibited 

 having three spikes, one of which, in full bloom, had 

 twelve flowers on it. The^ flowers are white, beauti- 

 fully blotched with dark brown, with the labellum in 

 the form of a fringed crest, striped with brown at the 

 sides and lemon-yellow in the centre. A large number 

 of these plants were imported from Ecuador last year 

 by Mr. Bull, and the one shown, which is perhaps the 

 largest single plant in the country, was purchased at 

 one of Stephens's sales last autumn. Eirst-class certifi- 

 cates were also awarded to Mr. Charles Noble, for 

 Clematis " President," a seedling of the patens type, 

 with large dark- bluish plum-coloured flowers, an early 

 flowering plant, that must become useful ; to Messrs. 

 Veitch and Sons, for Adiantum digitatum, a very 

 handsome deciduous species from Peru ; and for 

 Rhododendron "Princess of Wales," a hybrid between 

 P. Royal and R. Lobbii, a fine bright salmon-red, 

 white-tubed flower, and very showy. 



At the meeting of the same society, held on April 

 19th, a first-class certificate was awarded to Messrs. 

 W. Paul and Son for a new Zonal Pelargonium, raised 

 by F. Miles, Esq., and named Vanessa, the blooms 

 cerise or pale salmon-red in colour, with a faint shade of 

 purple round the eye, the pips large and of good form, 

 and the truss fine in size. A first-class certificate was 

 also awarded to Messrs. James Veitch and Sons for 

 Croton Macfeeanus, one of the largest-leaved and 

 strongest growing sorts yet introduced ; the leaves are 

 about a foot long and four inches broad, with a bright 

 green ground colour, and large blotches of yellow, 

 the young stems being also of the latter colour. Also 

 for Phyllanthus roseus pictus, a very prettily varie- 

 gated plant, resembling P. nivosus in habit, and which, 

 like the Croton, comes from the South Sea Islands. 

 E. Whitbourn, Esq. (gr., Mr. Douglas), received a 

 similar award for Auricula Alexander Meiklejohn, a 

 show variety, and one of the finest of the grey-edged 

 section ; the ground colour is nearly black, and the 

 paste dense white, a very fine variety. It was first in 

 the single grey-edged class at Manchester last year. 



GrRIFFINIA ORNATA. 



The accompanying engraving illustrates an indivi- 

 dual bloom from an umbel of twenty or twenty- four 

 flowers from this new plant, recently imported by Mr. 

 Bull from the district of Rio de Janeiro, in Brazil. 

 This fine new winter-blooming stove bulb, writes Mr. 

 Moore, in the " Gardeners' Chronicle," bears a prima 

 facie general resemblance to Grriffinia dryades, aa 

 figured in the "Botanical Magazine'' (t. 5786), 

 especially as regards its inflorescence ; but the two 

 plants differ very materially when a closer comparison 

 is made. G. dryades has flattish, broad, ovate leaves, 

 with the blade 18-20 nerved on each side the mid-rib ; 

 and the surface marked out into distinctly square- 

 meshed, coarse, prominent reticulations, showing the 

 course of the raised longitudinal and transverse veins. 

 In G. ornata, on the other hand, the leaves are 

 narrower and more oblong in outline, and so strongly 

 recurved along the margin that a cross section woidd 

 almost describe a semi-circle, while the nerves are 

 only about twelve on each side the mid-rib, with close- 

 set parallel cross-nerves, which are sunk in the 

 substance of the leaves, and are scarcely visible on 

 the surface as transverse striae. The plane inner 

 surface of the blunt-edged petiole of G. dryades, which 

 extends through the blade of the leaf as a flat, scarcely 

 depressed mid-rib below, becoming prominent near the 

 apex, is, moreover, quite different from the deeply- 



