98 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
May 13. 
vines or plants have less need of a circulation, but that 
their susceptibility has so much increased. 
The two great opponents to be dreaded aro—cutting 
winds and frosty air; and when either prevails, espe¬ 
cially the former, the manager must operate more at the 
back of the house than the front; getting rid of surplus 
heat, rather than encouraging a draught with a too free 
liberty to rake the whole interior area. We have been 
rather explicit, perhaps tedious, about these little mat¬ 
ters, but they are intended for little gardeners, although 
such may be two yards high. R. Errington. 
MENZIESIA ERECTA, AZALEA AMCENA, &o. 
As far back as 183G, I entered a strong protest, in 
Loudon’s Gardener's Magazine, against that division of 
the Lleathworts proposed by the late Mr. Don in the 
Edinburgh Philosophical Journal, and which he adopted 
in his edition of Miller's Dictionary, because 1 knew, by 
actual experiments in crossing them, that some of the 
genera, at least, were not natural; and that the most 
that could be said about them would only show that the 
several groups thus elevated to the distinction of genera 
were natural enough merely as distinct sections of one 
genus. At that time most of these objectionable genera 
were adopted by Decaudollc in his great Prodromus ; 
and Mr. Loudon followed him in his great work, the 
Arboretum Britannicurn. Since then, however, the 
lamented Endlicher made a far better arrangement of 
the natural orders than that by Deoandolle, and in it he 
discarded most of the new spurious genera into which 
the Heatlrworts were divided, as did also Dr. Lindley 
subsequently in his Vegetable Kingdom; and, as if to 
prove the adago that it is not safe to fall into bad com¬ 
pany, we excluded from Tiie Cottage Gardener’s 
Dictionary a genus of lleathworts that was named a 
hundred years ago, so that the name of a most beautiful 
hardy, or nearly hardy Heatliwort, which I am just 
going to recommend for universal cultivation, cannot be 
found in our Dictionary; and this notice may spare some 
letters asking us about it from our Dictionary-raiders ; 
for our Dictionary is not such dry reading as some of 
them, after all. The name by which this plant is known 
about London is Bryanthus erectus: derived from hr yon, 
a moss, and anthos a flower; because the original plant 
is a little trailing thing, growing so low on mossy ground, 
that the flowers appear, at first, as if actually produced 
by the moss itself. There are two species known having 
this habit, natives of Siberia and the north west coast of 
America. The London plant, erectus, grows upright, 
as the word means; still it is a very low evergreen bush, 
and one of the prettiest things you can imagine for a 
spring flower; every body should have a plant of it, and 
then increase it to a score at least. The nearest plant 
that I can compare it to from memory is thus: suppose 
the little flat-growing Daphne Cneorim to be changed to 
a stiff upright-growing plant, and the shoots growing 
quite close together, and only ten inches high and a foot 
in diameter ; then suppose them to be covered all over 
the top with pink flowers, like a Kalmia latifolia, and 
you havo the outline of Bryanthus erectus, but the true 
name of it is Menziesia erecla .* A beautiful specimen 
of it was exhibited before the Horticultural Society the 
other day from our own garden, where it flowered in a 
cold frame, but I believe it would bloom just as well on 
tbo top of Ben Nevis, once thought to be the highest 
point in Scotland. Wo had a nice lecture about it, in 
which it was stated that its origin is a point of dispute ; 
some people saying that it came from North America, 
others asserting that it is a cross seedling, but we did 
not hear the opinion of the lecturer; if it is really a 
* Menziesia is in Tiie Cottage Gardener's Dictionary. M. 
erecla very much resembles M. empetriforiuis there described. In 
l’axton’s Dictionary it is Erica bryanthu. 
hybrid, the mother must be the original species found in 
Siberia by Gmelin, a German, who took nearly ten years 
exploring the botany of the north-east of Asia; he 
called it Bryanthus repens serpillifolia ftore-roseo, 
Thunbcrg mistook it for a heath, ami Linnaeus called 
it Andromeda; but Pursli and Swartz met with it on j 
the west coast of North America, and made it out to be | 
just what it is, a Menziesia; and I have made all this i 
palaver about it in order to get it out into the world, as 
well for growing in pots to come into the conservatory 
in bloom with the spring azaleas, as an excellent sub¬ 
ject to try experiments in crossing. If I had leisure, it 
is the very first plant I would take in hand for crossing; 
and if I had been thirty years younger, I think 1 could 
stock a garden from it with plants as different in habit 
and flower as the Capo Heaths, and fully as rich and 
gay, besides being quite hardy to the bargain. 
It never rains but it pours. My next plant is quite 
now, also a Heathwort, and is as much superior to Bry- , 
anthus erectus, in every point of view, as that fine species, 
if it must be so called, is to tho common Menziesia, or j 
Irish Heath. There was only a little morsel of it on 
the same table with Bryanthus, but you could not enter 
the room without noticing it, and without being puzzled 
to know what it could be till you got up close to it, and 
saw that it was not only a new Azalea, but a now colour, 
and a new form of flower altogether different from any 
other azalea you ever saw. If I saw it first through a 
window, in a stall in Covent Garden Market, I should 
tako it to bo a brilliant “ self” polyanthus—a rich purple, 
stuck on the top of a sprig of box-tree, to attract atten¬ 
tion. Eortunately, Mr. Fortune, who found it in China, 
was in the room, and he told me all about it; besides, we 
had a good lecture on it; but the lecturer, like me, is 
not much of a florist, so he did not enlarge on its merits 
as a florists’ flower, which it certainly is, as round as a 
tea-cup, and as smooth on the edges. There are more 
petals in that flower than one would take to be; but 
they overlap each other so nicely, that you would think 
a florist had put them in their places that very morning 
with a pair of pincers, or whatever they dress their 
flowers with. It is this confounded dressing which 
makes so many persons disgusted with florists’ flowers. 
They aro really very pretty things, if they did but let 
them havo their natural way. Then, if one florist finds 
out a better way of dressing a flower than his next-door 
neighbour, he gets a prize for it, and they both "jaw" 
at each other, and at every one who comes near them, 
till nobody takes heed of what they say. But here is a 
new azalea, which needs no aid from the dresser of 
flowers. Mr. Fortune thinks it will be quite hardy 
with us; ho never saw anything like it in China be¬ 
longing to that family, and on that account he named 
it himself Azalea arnrena, that is to say, “the lovely 
azalea;” it is evergreen, and the diminutive of the 
race or section to which variegata belongs. If it turns 
out to be hardy it will improve the whole family of 
Chinese azaleas as much as the Scarlet Tree Rhododen¬ 
dron, from the Himalaya!) mountains, has done that 
part of the family; for, strange to say, tho rhododendron 
and the azalea are only well-defined sections of tho 
samo genus, each of which will cross with the other; 
and such plants and flowers of Chinese azaleas as we 
now see exhibited at the shows from the greenhouse 
will be seen in the open shrubbery, or in the “ Ame¬ 
rican grounds,” all over the country ; and if that is not 
good news, and something new to look for, it is not 
worth while sending to China for any more plants. 
The cultivation and management of these Chinese 
azaleas has been brought so nearly to perfection, that 
one would hardly expect to see or hear of any new im¬ 
provement being effected among them ; but I confess 
that l was completely taken by surprise the other day 
at seeing the success of a new experiment in the way of 
