APRIL. 
65 
AUCUBA JAPONICA. 
WITH AN ILLUSTRATION. 
Who amongst us is not familiar with the common blotched-leaved Aucuba, 
which, for three-quarters of a century, has been the inmate of every garden— 
the ornament of every shrubbery ? And yet which of us, till within a few 
months of the present time, have realised the full beauty of that gorgeous 
shrub ? For it is a gorgeous shrub, when laden with its ample trusses of large, 
oblong, brilliant, coral red berries; and nothing we have in the way of ever¬ 
greens can at all compare with it. 
The reason we have been so long ignorant of the full merit of the Aucuba 
japonica arises out of the fact that the plant is dioecious—producing its stamen¬ 
bearing flowers on one plant, and its pistil-bearing flowers on another. All 
the Aucubas we possessed in this country, till quite recently, were of the 
latter kind, all, doubtless, the progeny of one originally-imported individual: 
and hence, as we had no fertilising pollen, our poor Aucuba blossomed uselessly 
so far as concerned the production of its ornamental berries. To Mr. Fortune 
belongs the credit of giving us the first male Aucuba; and the spring of 
1863 will be famous in the annals of horticulture as that in which English 
gardeners first saw, through the agency of these male plants of Mr. Fortune’s, 
the first berry-laden bush produced in Europe. 
This plant is that which our plate represents, as grown by Mr. Standish, of 
the Ascot Nurseries. It also—that is to say, the green-leaved female Aucuba 
—is a recent introduction from Japan, and is, no doubt, the typical form of the 
species, of which our common blotched-leaved Aucuba is one of the many 
varieties having variegated foliage. Handsome as the spotted Aucubas are, the 
green-leaved form is still handsomer, on account of the better contrast it presents 
with the coral-coloured fruit. Mr. Fortune himself observes :—“ The green¬ 
leaved I look upon as the most valuable of them all. It forms excellent dwarf 
hedges, and its glossy evergreen foliage is very ornamental, particularly during 
the spring months, when the rich coral-coloured berries may be seen peeping 
out from amongst its leaves.” Our principal figure represents this plant in 
fruit, but we are unable to give the true brilliancy of colour, which is that of 
the finest glossy sealingwax. In the upper corner of the plate is a small sprig 
of the blossoms of the male form, which has wrought such a change in the 
few plants as yet brought within its influence ; and which, when well esta¬ 
blished and planted out in our gardens and shrubberies, is to work similar 
changes on the many forms of Aucubas which henceforth—thanks to Messrs. 
Siebold, Fortune, and Veitch—will adorn them. 
That the common variety will be equally ornamental so far as the pro¬ 
duction of berries is concerned, is now sufficiently evident; for it has already 
been exhibited in a fruiting state by Mr. Laing, of Twickenham, who produced, 
at the Roj’al Botanic Society’s Show, on the 18th of March in the present 
year, two or three small bushes with the bunches of glossy scarlet fruit very 
well developed, in which state, on account of the larger size of the berries, it is 
decidedly more ornamental than the Holly, and that is sufficiently high praise. 
M. 
BEDDING TULIPS. 
There has been, of late years, such an increased demand for bedding 
Tulips that the price of many sorts has been doubled. At one time I con¬ 
sidered that these could not be grown in our gardens in sufficient quantities to 
be remunerative. Of late years, however, our success here has led me to 
E 
