Plate 469 . 
PENSTEMONS— AGNES LAING AND 
STANSTEAD SURPRISE. 
Hardy herbaceous plants are receiving more attention 
than they have done for years ; amongst other indications of 
this we may mention the fact that at the Great Provincial 
Show of the Royal Horticultural Society, to be held at Oxford, 
prizes are offered for Penstemons, Antirrhinums, Phloxes, &c., in 
pots. Whether this is quite judicious may be questioned, but 
it shows at any rate that attention is being drawn to them. 
We have figured in previous volumes some groups of the 
useful and long-flowering Penstemons, of which Messrs. Hownie, 
Laird, and Laing have been the principal cultivators in the 
neighbourhood of London ; and we have now in those figured 
in our plate an advance, as may be seen in referring to our 
former figures, both in the habit and colour of the flowers : in 
the habit, because they are more compact in their spikes of 
bloom, the individual flowers not being so far from each other 
as in those which we have formerly figured ; and in the colour, 
because the ground is so much purer. In fact they are quite 
equal to the best of the continental varieties, and are in consti- 
tution probably superior. 
Agnes Laing (fig. 1) is a flower of a peculiarly bright and 
pleasing shade of rose ; the contour of the flower is excellent, 
and the white exceedingly pure. Stanstead Surprise (fig. 2) is 
of a pleasing shade of lively purple and with a pure white 
