270 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
i 
July 20. 
FINAL NOTES ON THE EXHIBITIONS. 
The specimen of Ilumea elegans which I mentioned 
last week as being exhibited at Chiswick, and another 
of Iponxmi, or Pharbitis Learii, which stood not far 
from it, required as much skill and good gardening to 
bring them out, such as they were, as any two plants 
exhibited. The blue Iponum was a triumph of skill 
and good management; every leaf was perfectly healthy 
down to the rim of the large pot, and the whole surface 
of the large trellis on which it was trained was filled 
with the most luxuriant growth and bloom. Some good 
gardeners, whom I could name, could never keep this 
fine climber in health, even after planting it out into a 
free border. 
Pleromn elegans. —This is magnificent for a specimen 
plant; but very few gardeners have yet made the dis¬ 
covery how to grow it fit to be seen, and so we had only ' 
one specimen of it shown all the season. It was at the 
last Chiswick exhibition; the plant and growth were 
specimens of skillful training and culture; there were 
not many flowers open, but the ends of all the shoots 
were studded with blossom-buds, much after the fashion 
of the Gum cistus, but the shape and size of the flower 
are more like Lisyantlms Russellianus, and the colour is i 
most rich and lovely,—a bluish purple of the richest i 
dye. It is altogether one of the finest plants we have I 
in cultivation; and this specimen proves that it will 1 
grow and bloom as freely as a Gum cistus on the lawn 
when properly treated. It is a warm greenhouse plant, ! 
but would grow and bloom out-of-doors in a shaded 
peat border from July to the end of September; after 1 
blooming, it may be cut in as close as a geranium ; and 
after a little growth be shaken out of the old soil the 
same way. It requires no more heat in winter than a 
geranium; but as soon as it begins to grow in the 
epriug, a moist pit, with a gentle bottom-heat, with 
plenty of air and light, are necessaries to its final suc¬ 
cess ; and, last of all, the compost they use for the 
Epacris, with less than one-third very good mellow loam 
added to it, will suit this beautiful plant to perfection, 
and it will grow in time to the size of a large goose¬ 
berry bush. 
Glerodenclrons. —Of theso C. Kcempferi is the richest 
and finest they exhibit; G. fallax the next best, and 
there are several good varieties of it now; but they have 
an exceedingly bad sort of G. paniculatum about London, j 
and they grow it so badly that it is a disgrace to the 
gardening of the country to see the abortive apologies ! 
they bring to table; but it is by over-doing the 
thing that they spoil this Clerodendron, and, perhaps, j 
that is the reason also of the nasty dull colour or no I 
colour of their flowers. If I was one of the judges, I ! 
would disqualify a collection if there was a G. panicu- ! 
latum in it with the flower-spike less symmetrical than 
the top half of a church spire, for that is its natural 
shape. All monstrosities and coxcomb growths in this 
part of the plant detracts from its natural beauty and 
symmetry, and also diminishes the length of the panuicle. 
Gloriosa superba. —This fine old plant came out on 
two occasions, fii'st at the Regent’s Park, and again at 
Chiswick; and were it not for a specimen of it which 
Mr. Ayres exhibited two or three years back, we would 
all say that this was the best specimen of it ever pro¬ 
duced. Good strong tubers (not bulbs) of this will 
bloom as freely as the Japan lilies, to which it is related, 
but not in near affinity; although Gloriosa is almost 
placed side by side with the truo lilies by our best 
authors, there can be no question of their being as far 
apart as great grand-cousins, still the same times of 
growth and rest, and the same compost, will suit both 
parties, only that the Gloriosa needs a strong bottom- 
heat at first, and afterwards to be trained; but it is 
worth all the pains you can bestow on it. 
Grinums. — There was a large mass of one of the 
Asiatic crinums belonging to the section with columnar 
stems above the bulb, with plain white flowers, so 
common in this fine genus ; it had a wrong second 
name, but was a fine specimen of bulb culture. 
Mschynanths .— The one called pulclier was at Chis¬ 
wick in fine bloom, and covered a barrel trellis nearly 
four feet high; and there was another plant very much 
akin to the same genus, called Agalmyla (heauty of the 
forest) staminea. This was a very small plant, and the 
soft shoots being trained down on the surface of the pot, 
and producing their flowers from the lower parts, might 
deceive one into the belief that this species sends up its 
scarlet flowers direct from the ground roots, instead of 
which, however, the plant can be trained like any of the 
rEsckynanths, and the flowers will show after the same 
fashion. I saw one little plant called Cyrtanthera mag- 
nijica, which 1 took to be a magnificent error. I never 
heard of such a name, and the plant was as much like 
Justicia purpurea as anything could be; some people 
call this carnea, but the true J. carnea is quite a dif¬ 
ferent thing, and not nearly so useful a plant. Mr. 
Cattleugh used to exhibit fine specimens of the J. pur¬ 
purea. 
Pavetta Cgffra.- —This is an old stove plant; a tall, 
loose grower by nature for a shrub. Mrs. Lawrence 
used to have it finoly in bloom, at six or seven feet 
high. It came out this season in quite another, and in 
a much better, style, grown as a low bush, like a gera¬ 
nium ; and whoever succeeds with it that way will not 
regret reading my random recollections of the exhibi¬ 
tions. Let an old ugly plant of it, now not fit to be 
seen, but useful for cut flowers, be cut down to within 
nine inches of the pot; if the roots are good, this stump 
will beard out surprizingly, and you must thin the 
shoots; then, when they arc an inch long, shake away 
the soil from the roots, and prune them as Mr. Erring- 
ton would those of a young pear tree. In other words, 
root-prune this Pavetta most severely, and put it into 
the smallest pot you can get the roots into; after that, 
go on with it, year after year, as you would with a gera¬ 
nium. Here, then, is a great point gained ; and if it is 
true that the constant dropping of water will wear away 
the hardest stone, surely it must be no less true that 
the industry of British gardeners, stimulated by gold 
and silver medals, will overcome all difficulties in the 
way of growing plants, and bring in a host of fine plants 
that have long since been neglected, because, under less 
favourable circumstances, they were not found to yield 
to the first few experiments. This Pavetta was from 
Messrs. Fraser, of the Lee Bridge Nursery, the enduring 
rivals to Mrs. Lawrence, until she bought up their oppo¬ 
sition. But now they are coining round again; they 
were the first who showed the capabilities of the old 
Crassula, now erroneously called Kalosantlius coccinea, 
and their specimen of it at this exhibition had more 
lustre in it than any out of the great numbers that 
were shown. 
I do not know who first took up the erroneous idea 
that Kalosanthes was meant for Crassula coccinea, but it ; 
was no such thing. The word was coined by the late : 
Mr. Haworth for Rocheafalcata, quite a different plant; 
but very few of Haworth’s names have been adopted by 
authors, and Kalosanthes is one of the rejected, and yet 
it meets you at every turn round all the exhibitions. 
Tristania nereifolia, a very old New Holland plant, 
belonging to Myrtleblooms, with quantities of small 
yellow flowers towards the tops of the branches, was in 
Messrs. Fraser’s collection, and when it can be bloomed 
near home, like their Pavetta, it will come to be a 
general favourite. They had also Turncra trioniflora, as 
easy to grow as anything, but as uncertain for full¬ 
blown flowers, when you want them, as the smiles of a 
giddy maiden, and yet, on a fine sunny day, what can 
