158 ROYAL BOTANIC GARDENS, KEW 
students with South African plants ; the first decades of the 
nineteenth century with Australian plants ; the ’fifties with West 
American conifers ; the later decades of the century 
with tropical orchids. We five in an epoch now 
o o en rons. w bich j n tj m e come> be associated with the 
flora of Western China. In the same way the years 1847-51 con- 
stitute a minor epoch, and are important in the annals of horticulture 
as witnessing the first great introduction to England of the magnificent 
rhododendrons of the Himalaya. These were the years in which 
Sir Joseph Hooker made his famous Himalayan journeys, and it 
is to him that our gardens owe their first possession of these gorgeous 
plants. He sent seeds home to Kew, and the plants raised from them 
were distributed to other gardens, public and private. They are 
now the glory of many a Cornish garden, but unfortunately a small 
number only can be grown with success in the open air at Kew. The 
little shelter they need (it is in spring more than in winter that they 
need it) is provided by the Himalayan House. Here a few degrees 
of frost are not considered harmful, and fire-heat is only used when 
the weather is exceptionally severe. 
Rhododendrons — species, varieties, and hybrids — constitute the 
predominant feature of this house. All of them flower during the 
first five months of the year, and make it very gay 
and interesting then. Their colours range from a rich 
blood-red, through all the grades of rose and pink, to 
white. Camellias, both species and garden varieties, are well repre- 
sented, and among them is Camellia theifera , the Chinese shrub whose 
dried leaves form the tea of everyday use. A singularly graceful 
coniferous tree is Cupressus funebris glauca, with pendulous, blue- 
white branches. Other interesting species of the same group are 
Pinus longifolia (a Himalayan pine) and Microcachrys tetragona 
(from New Zealand). At the south end is a large group of a singular 
and beautiful vacciniaceous plant from the Himalaya, Pentapteryginm 
serpens ; this plant is epiphytic — i.e. it grows on the branches of 
other trees — and sends out from a tuberous woody base long serpentine 
shoots which bear rows of pendent scarlet flowers. 
Two rock-pools near the northern entrance impart an agreeable 
diversity to the aspect of the house, and afford suitable conditions 
for moisture-loving plants too tender to show their best out-of- 
doors. Most notable of them is, perhaps, a species of Lysichitum, 
Camellias, 
etc. 
