266 
where they flower iu profusion, without any earth or 
care, filling the air with their delicious fragrance. 
The whole race of Bromelworts would flourish in our 
stoves, fastened to logs of wood, like Mr. Appleby’s orchids, 
or nailed to damp walls under the shade of other things ; 
also planted in pieces of beetroot, which, if the leaf end 
hung downwards, would soon put forth a new crop of leaves 
that would nestle a Bromelwort in their attempt to secure a 
more natural position. Such are the Piteaimias and their 
allies, which, under a liberal system, would soon multiply 
themselves by suckei-s and seeds to an inconvenient extent. 
Pitcairnia Jacksoni was imported accidentally by Mr. Jack- 
son, among tufts of orchids, from Guatimala. It is a stove 
plant; roots fibrous, and producing many suckers; leaves 
full a foot long, pointed sword-shape, spined-saw-toothed on 
the upper part only, upper side dark green and smooth, 
under side white-powdered. Flower stem, leafy at the bot¬ 
tom, powdered, and hearing scarlet flowers, of which the 
powdered flower-stalks stand out slightly raised, with bractes; 
calyx powdered, three-cleft, scarlet, with yellow edges; corolla 
three inches long, and scarlet; stamens length of petals, and 
the pistil rather longer. Found native in dry places; in¬ 
creased by suckers; and thrives in a mixture of light loam 
and peat. 
Pale-flowered Calochortus (Calochortus pallidas ).— 
Annales de Gaud., t, 225.—This is a very beautiful genus 
of bulbous plants, belonging to the Lilyworts (Liliacete), 
and nearly related to the Tulip and the FritiUanj, but 
easily distinguished from both by having the sepaline 
petals, or the three which represent the calyx in this 
order, of a different form, colour, and texture, from the 
true petals. They are almost exclusively found wild in 
the warm vallies in California, or in their neighbour¬ 
hood; but neither Pursh, Douglas, or Hartweg, who 
have seen them growing, have related the exact condi¬ 
tions of climate under which they are found, nor even 
the precise localities where the best species inhabit. 
From Hartweg we learn that those he met with in the 
upper parts of the Sacramento Valley, chiefly lutcus and 
pallidus (?), begin to grow at the end of October, when 
the rains commence; and that they flower in May, after 
[January 60 . 
the rains have ceased sometime, and when the annual 
clothing of the valley is withered up by a scorching sun. 
From this scanty information we can perceive the reason 
why all, or almost all, the large importations of them by 
the Horticultural Society, and which they distributed 
among the Fellows nearly twenty years ago, have been 
lost to the country. We ourselves flowered macrocarpa , 
splendens, and venusta, three of the most handsome 
flowering bulbs winch we ever bad the good fortune to 
flower in one year, but we never saw any more of them. 
Indeed, we went under the impression for some years 
that they were altogether extinct in our gardens, until 
we were informed lately, when making inquiries for the 
subject of this biography, that Mr. Groom, of Clapham 
Rise, the great bulb grower, has succeeded in saving 
them, and that he stands alone as a successful cultivator 
of the Calochorti; and if Mr. Groom should see this 
page, we make little doubt, from his well-known libe¬ 
rality, lie will benefit our readers by sending a short 
account of their treatment to The Cottage Gardener. 
The name Calochortus was given, nearly forty years ago, 
by Frederick Pursh, a Prussian botanist, who travelled 
extensively in North America in search of botanical 
novelties, and who wrote a work in two volumes on the 
new plants he discovered in the north and north western 
parts of the New World—a work which was published 
in London iu 1814 under the title Flora Americana 
Septentrionalis. The word Calochortus is derived from 
halos, beautiful, and chortus, grass; the young leaves of 
these handsome bulbs issuing forth like blades of grass 
on the return of the periodical rains late in the autumn; 
and with the allied Cyclobothra, Brodicea , Triteleja, and 
such like bulbs, form the only herbage when they are in 
blossom; as no plants except trees, shrubs, and bulbous 
rooted ones, can withstand the May sun of California. 
Hence it is that large tracts of the country are clothed 
with plants having only an annual duration. Bulbs 
from such regions are exceedingly impatient of wet when 
they are not growing; but we shall not anticipate Mr. 
Groom in respect to their true culture. 
When David Douglas went out on liis second and last 
mission from the Horticultural Society to the north-west 
coast of America, and finding it impracticable and unsafe to 
ascend the great Columbia river, according to his instruc¬ 
tions, he pushed on his way to California, which he reached 
this time twenty years back, and he spent the next two years 
exploring the gold country, whence he sent those Calochorti 
which were distributed by the society. Still we are ignorant 
of the exact localities where he met with them, and his 
journals and papers, through some unworthy feeling on the 
part of the officers of the society, as it is understood, have 
never been published, but to this day remain in the archives 
of the society. Tins is much to be regretted now that a 
regular communication has been established with California. 
Were we in possession of Douglas's journals, they would 
surely give a clue to the localities where the writer met with 
such beautiful bulbs. If their native places of growth have 
been really pointed out by Mr. Douglas, it was a very serious 
omission on the part of the council of the Horticultural 
Society, not to have made Hartweg aware of them when he 
was sent lately to California, and where he spent a long time 
without having met with many, or even with the best, of the 
old Calochorti. But, as in the case of Douglas, the officers 
of the society chose to differ with Mr. Hartweg about the 
scantiness of his journals and other things ; so that, before 
he had’time to collect his ideas, and record them, after liis 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
