Plate 217. 



CLEMATIS LANUGINOSA VIOLACEA. 



The Clematis is one of the most beautiful and, at the same time, one of the most modern of 

 all garden flowers. The oldest hybrid was raised barely thirty years ago, and now we have 

 them by the hundred, and improvements in form and colour are taking place every year. 

 The beautiful variety we have selected for figuring was shown by Mr. Noble, of Bagshot, 

 for the first time in April last, and was awarded a first-class certificate by the Floral 

 Committee of the Royal Horticultural Society as a most desirable decorative plant, either 

 for pot-culture or as an out-door plant for covering rock-work, rooteries, or trellises in 

 sheltered situations, where the great flowers will not be injured by rough winds or heavy 

 rains. The individual blooms of this variety (which is one of the most attractive of all the 

 varieties belonging to this section of the genus) vary in size, but are rarely less than seven 

 inches in diameter, the sepaline segments being of great substance. 



In addition to this fine variety, Mr. Noble has also received certificates this year for C. 

 " President," another effective dark purplish variety (the result of an attempt to gain an early- 

 flowered form of the C. Jackmanii type), and C. Proteus, a rosy purple double or semi-double 

 flower, which is likely to be the forerunner of a very useful race. At the last meeting of 

 the Eoyal Horticultural Society Mr. Noble exhibited a very pale lilac or nearly white 

 variety of C. Jackmanii, and this we consider is a welcome addition to the group to which 

 it belongs, as from it a pure white seedling will doubtless soon be obtained, a result hitherto 

 hoped for in vain. What is now wanted is a race of hybrids between C. Jackmanii or 

 C. lanuginosa and the lovely old C. montana, which is one of the hardiest, earliest, and most 

 floriferous of all the species now grown in our gardens. It seems singular that such 

 graceful plants as Clematis should be so rarely used in our gardens to produce pleasing 

 landscape or gardenesque effects ; for it cannot but be allowed that they are capable of 

 adding more beauty to the garden than almost any other climbing plant, if we except the 

 Rose ; and these two plants and fresh green Ivy might be associated in a hundred different 

 ways, either in beds or borders, or on walls, tree-trunks, trellises, or over bowers and 

 verandahs, where their great delicate- tinted flowers could be viewed to the best advantage. 



Plate 218. 



FREEZIA LEICHTLINIANA. 



All who have hitherto grown this plant have been perfectly satisfied with its modest beauty, 

 and our coloured figure of it is, we believe, the first which has been published in this 

 country. As to the merits of the plant, we cannot do better than quote the following 

 description, which appeared in a recent number of the " Garden," from the pen of W. E. 

 Gumbleton, Esq., of Belgrove, near Cork :— " This charming and delicately-perfumed little 

 plant has now been in bloom in my conservatory for over a month, having commenced to 

 open its pretty flowers (which are of a delicate primrose yellow, with a deep and clearly- 

 marked golden blotch on the front of the lower petals) about the end of February, and 

 continuing in beauty throughout the whole of March. The perfume exhaled from its 

 blossoms is of an exquisite and peculiar character, not exactly resembling that of any other 

 plant with which I am acquainted, but reminding one of what the concentrated essence of 

 the common Primrose of the woods might be. This pretty plant was first introduced into 

 this country by the New Plant and Bulb Company, at Colchester, who exhibited a well- 



