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shrub with unusually large flowers, and during the past week has been 
one of the handsomest Syringas in the collection; the flowers are with- 
out perfume. Philadelphus maximus, a supposed hybrid between 
P. latifolius from the southeastern United States, and P. tomentosus 
from the Himalayas, grows to a larger size than any of the other 
Syringas. It is not rare in old Massachusetts gardens in which plants 
from twenty to thirty feet high can occasionally be seen. The crossing 
about thirty years ago in France by Lemoine of P. coronarius with 
P. microphyllus produced an entirely new race of Syringas which has 
proved to be one of the best additions to garden shrubs that has ever 
been made. The first plant obtained by this cross is called Philadel- 
phus Lemoinei; it is a perfectly hardy shrub four or five feet high 
and broad, with slender stems which bend from the weight of countless 
flowers; these are intermediate in size between those of the two par- 
ents and retain the fragrance of P. microphyllus. There are at least 
a dozen distinct forms of this hybrid made by Lemoine, varying con- 
siderably in the size of the plants and of the flowers, and in the time 
of flowering. One of the handsomest, perhaps, is called Candelabre; 
this is a very dwarf plant with flowers larger than those of either of 
its parents and an inch and a half wide, with petals notched on 
the margins, and without the perfume of its parents. Other dis- 
tinct forms equally hardy and beautiful are Avalanche, Boule d’Argent, 
Bouquet Blanc, Erectus, Fantasie, Gerbe de Neige and Mont Blanc. 
The Mock Orange of old gardens, Philadelphus coronarius, a native 
of southeastern Europe and the Caucasus, was cultivated in England 
in 1596 and was probably one of the first shrubs brought to America 
by the English settlers. It is a shapely hardy shrub able to bear a 
good deal of neglect and abuse, and chiefly valuable for the fragrance 
of the flowers which are smaller than those of many other species and 
faintly tinged with yellow. Several forms of this plant are in the 
collection. None of them, however, are of particular beauty or inter- 
est, and one of them with double solitary flowers is as ugly as it is 
possible for a Syringa to be. Among the species none is perhaps more 
interesting than the Rocky Mountain P. microphyllus, one of the par- 
ents of the Lemoine hybrids. It is a compact shrub three or four 
feet high and broad with leaves not more than half an inch long and 
smaller flowers than those of any other Philadelphus in cultivation 
and rather less than three-quarters of an inch in diameter; their 
fragrance is not surpassed by that of any plant in the collection. 
The most beautiful of the species of recent introduction, P. purpu- 
rascens , is a native of western China, where it was discovered by 
Wilson. It is a shrub with long arching branches, from which rise 
numerous branchlets spreading at broad angles and from four to six 
inches long; these bear the flowers on drooping stalks from near the 
base to the apex and give to the plant when it flowers a different 
appearance from that of any of the other species. The flowers have 
a strong pungent and delightful odor and are an inch and a half in 
diameter with a purple calyx and pure white petals w r hich do not spread 
like those of many of the species but form a bell-shaped corolla. It 
is the handsomest of the Old World species, and an addition to gar- 
den plants of first importance. It is interesting that the handsomest 
of the American species, P. indorus, was one of the first Syringas 
cultivated in Europe where it arrived about the middle of the eighteenth 
