50 
JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
July 19, 1894. 
C. venustus. The latter were the most beautiful of all. 
C. V. citrinus, having bright yellow flowers spotted with brown, and 
a brown blotch rather more than half way down each petal. This 
was very fine. C. v. oculatus was also a charming flower, so marked 
and coloured that it is impossible to describe. My note of it is as 
follows ; “ Fine white and purple rose, marked with brown, yellow, 
and lilac ; fine deep brown blotch margined with yellow on each 
petal; very beautiful.” C. v. roseus I thought scarcely so good, 
but it had many points of beauty. It is white tinged with rose, 
marked with brown, rose, and a little yellow, and with two brown 
spots on each petal, the upper one being of a red brown. The 
markings of this become much deeper towards the base of the 
petals. With the flowers came stems to show the growth. These 
were over 2 feet high, while the blooms of the largest were 
fully 3 inches in diameter. If these Mariposa Lilies or Butterfly 
Tulips can only be grown successfully in our gardens a new charm 
will be given them. There are several others readily obtainable, 
and I hope to test their value for my garden next season. The 
Calochorti are generally grown in frames, but a bed in the open 
carpeted with some dwarf plants would be of great beauty. 
C. Gunnisoni, which I saw in the open at Kew, is pale lilac in 
colour, and seemed to me ineffective. No doubt it would have 
looked better if grown among herbaceous plants or carpeted with a 
low-growing evergreen herb. 
At this season there is not the superabundance of yellow 
flowers which may be seen as autumn advances. It is true there 
is no scarcity of these, but the pretty yellow flowers of some of the 
Evening Primroses are ever welcome. Very interesting and 
beautiful are the nocturnal bloomers, but those which are open in 
broad daylight are attractive also. One which may be recom¬ 
mended with every confidence is one grown in gardens under the 
name of ffinothera Youngi. This is an erect growing plant with 
fair sized yellow flowers, and growing here to about 3 feet high. 
It is easily grown in the border, and looks well beside Campanula 
persicifolia coronata and Lychnis vespertina fl.-pl. 
With these and many other flowers July teaches us that she, 
too, yields not a confession that her blossoms are less fair than 
those of the months which have gone before, and that we may 
reap much true pleasure from the garden in these long summer 
days.—S. Arnott, Dumfries, 
RIPENED WOOD. 
“ Keep your duty straight before you, lad, and get your wood 
well ripened.” This was the parting advice given to the writer 
when exchanging bothy life for the more onerous position of head 
gardener—plain counsel in a brief text on an admittedly important 
subject. 
He who thus advised held a high position in the gardening 
world, and was not prone to verbosity with his young men, hence 
the remark carried additional weight, which subsequent experience 
has proved the wisdom of. The allusion was to Vines. Probably 
the speaker had mentally connected this phase of culture with the 
straight path of duty, and pos.sibly, as he had previously tripped 
to Ireland (where he was now sending the “lad ”), his keen observa¬ 
tion had noted in the “ Land o’Green,” that due consideration was 
not always paid to this important subject. 
Having since at various times personally noticed the same defect, 
but repressed from motives of delicacy from then and there giving 
tongue to the matter, I venture through the medium of these 
pages to relieve my mind of these pent up thoughts. The Fates 
forbid that I should trail them aggressively before the giants of 
“grapedom.” They rather apply to those gardens limited to one 
or two vineries, and the advice may be worthy of passing on—I 
think it is—to other “lads ” who are leaving the friendly aegis of 
a chief to run alone upon the path of duty. 
With one vinery more than ordinary anxiety is evinced to 
obtain, and maintain annually, a maximum amount of fruit from 
a minimum of space. That desirable margin which larger places 
afford is in the lesser ones not permissible. The small grower is 
apt to defeat his object by overcrowding. Too often does he spare 
the rod and further handicap himself by clapping on all spurs 
obtainable in order to win heavy crops. Feeding and watering the 
fruit-carrier may be conscientiously attended to, but any relaxation 
of the bearing-rein, in the way of stopping the shoots and removal 
of laterals, results in immature wood. 1 hat constant finger-and- 
thumb work so peculiarly necessary in this instance is not always 
maintained. This step in the path of duty is relegated to a rainy 
day, when some barrowloads of the Vine’s wasted energy are 
wheeled to the rubbish heap. Light, air, and sunshine (if there be 
any) are again admitted to the Vines, but our short summers make 
no allowance for the waste of time, and the Nemesis of unripened 
wood awaits the grower with all the attendant penalties accompany¬ 
ing. There is not, I think, any more pleasing picture to the 
critical eye than that nut-brown hue of the wood of Vines previous 
to or contemporaneous with the ripening of their fruit. It is 
the time when the sappy conditions of free growth, nurtured 
in the more humid stage of early treatment, are by a kind of 
ossification converted into that bony wood so pregnant with future 
capabilities. 
The text is capable of varied application, so in leaving the 
Vines I may be permitted, secondly, to touch on the important 
bearing it has on all fruit trees generally, and particularly on our 
wall trees. Some prominence must be given to these by reason of 
the position they hold in a garden. They are also freely exposed 
to the critical eye of interested visitors, though this is no reason 
they should have extra attention paid to them solely on that account, 
nor is it that they should have less. With these, the wood-ripen¬ 
ing process is more directly under the controlling hand of the 
gardener. Trees and bushes can have timely attention to prevent 
overcrowding, but on our walls we can trap those fugitive sunbeams 
so essential for prospective as well as present crops. As with the 
Vines, so with these, how often is that wasted energy trundled 
out in the form of breastwood ? and how many barrowloads of 
that blessed sunshine goes with it? Any way, this superfluous 
growth has been an effectual barrier to those rays so necessary to 
future crops. One can hardly over-estimate the benefits of timely 
and unremitting attention to secure the important object of well- 
ripened wood. 
As a text is often divided under three Leads, I will thirdly, and 
in conclusion, submit a thought bearing on Flora, twin sister of 
Pomona. Her votaries who select an object, say Roses or 
Chrysanthemums for special devotion, well know the evils 
attendant on overcrowding. Mr. Molyneux modestly attributed 
some of his high success in the “ mum ” department to the local 
influences of sunny Hampshire, but as not any of us can pick and 
choose the spot for our battle with Nature’s forces, it behoves 
us under less favourable circumstances to utilise by every means 
in our power those precious sunbeams. Trap them. Hold them 
in suspension to form in Nature’s laboratory the luscious fruit 
or perfect flower. Examples from sunnier climes, too, point the 
moral. It was my pleasing duty, nigh on twenty years ago, 
of handling a portion of the first consignment of Dendrobium 
Wardianum Lowi from Burmah, and well do I recollect those 
short fat pseudo-bulbs bearing on each node the relics of departed 
glory. 
In these days of advanced thought, and its practical results 
so much in evidence, it may appear cle trop to many persons in 
giving but a brief homily on this subject, but in the “ Land 
o’ Green,” where the “ lad ” has been ripening for some years, 
there are special difficulties in the way of rampant growth and 
superabundant foliage, tempting these few remarks, more suggestive 
than exhaustive.—E. K., Dublin, 
GREAT HERBS AT KEW. 
The present will be found a favourable time to visit the 
herbaceous ground at the Royal Gardens. Some of the greater 
species are unusually fine this season, and although the arrange¬ 
ment is necessarily formal, rigid, with little regard to surroundings, 
a good idea may be obtained of their suitability to more favoured 
localities. The imagination readily transports these grand plants 
to broken glades or openings in woods, or as clothing the sides of 
dells, showing their brilliant flowers and massive foliage on the 
banks of running water or against the heavy leafage of shrubbery 
or wood. Their great proportions demand a setting in which 
spaciousness is an important element; given room to grow and 
distance from which to view them, with fitting surroundings of 
wood, rock, and stream, and little grander in the way of vegetable 
growths can be conceived than some of these monster herbs. 
The Heracleums are past their best, and the huge umbels are 
setting their fruit, while the leaves are yellowing and dropping 
from the vigorous lines which they took in their prime. 
H. barbatum, H. pubescens, and H. gummiferum are each of them 
grand plants. H. panaces is the noblest of them all, with 
enormous leaves at least 7 feet long ; the whole plant cannot be 
less than 30 feet round by about 8 feet high. 
