PITCHER-PLANTS IN THE OPEN AIR 
Camellia, smooth, bright green with often a 
reddish tinge, and finely coloured with gold 
and crimson in the autumn. A plant now 12 
feet high has proved perfectly hardy for years 
past at Coombe Wood, and was a charming 
sight in July of this year when our photograph 
was taken. The stems and branches of old 
plants are covered with a smooth red bark 
which peels away in large thin flakes. Syn. 
S. japonic a and /S*. graudifiora. I 
S. virginica. — From the warmer southern ' 
states of North America, where it grows in 
swamps, on river banks, and in shady places 
from the coast to the foot of the mountains. I 
At its best it is one of the most beautiful of I 
flowering shrubs, though more sensitive to I 
cold and never so vigorous as the other kinds, 1 
rarely exceeding 10 feet in height and with a 
looser habit of growth. In this kind the flow- 
ers are finest of all but not quite so abundant, 
measuring 4 inches across, with pure white 
shell-like petals and red-stamens in the centre. 
The petals are smooth at the edges and some- 
times more or less streaked with crimson 
towards the base. Their season is variable, for 
while in warm places the first flowers open in 
May, in a cooler district they often wait for 
July. B. 
PITCHER-PLANTS IN THE 
OPEN AIR. 
In view of the interesting account of 
the DarHngtonia given in the last issue 
of Flora, your readers may be glad to 
learn that this remarkable plant and 
others of the hardier Pitcher-plants 
have now been established for several 
years in the gardens at Leonardslee, the 
residence of Sir Edmund Loder, Bart., 
at Horsham in Sussex. Our plants of 
Darlingtonia are growing in company 
with Sarracenia — an allied plant estab- 
lished here in large beds — and fully ex- 
posed to the sun, and they thrive well 
under these conditions. Their pitch- 
ers are for the most part filled with in- 
sects such as flies, wasps, beetles, and 
butterflies, which are lured into the 
hooded pitchers in the way so well de- 
scribed on page 23 i of your last issue, 
and, once engulfed, they hardly ever 
return. Decay not infrequently sets in 
among the entrapped mass at the lower 
part of the tube, and this blackens the 
base and is apt to destroy the pitchers, 
unless arrested by placing a small piece 
of cotton-wool or fine gauze over the 
mouth. These plants are established 
in peat and sphagnum resting on the 
natural soil (clay), and their pitchers 
are about 15 inches in height. 
Side by side with the Darlingtonias 
there are Sarracenias growing well and 
flowering profusely, while their seed 
ripens in quantity. There are numer- 
ous plants in various stages of develop- 
ment growing from seed ripened here. 
These seedlings are somewhat difficult 
to preserve when small owing to the 
ease with which they are smothered, 
T 2 
