82 
THE COTTAGE GAKDENER. 
Novembee 4. 
are not so thick and fleshy as those of the other species, 
but they are as large, or larger, than those of Zygopeta- 
luni MacJcayii; the sepals and petals are of equal size, 
and the lip is narrow, and in one of the plants it was 
of a deeper blue than the other. The flowers are set 
wide apart on the stalk, and they stand out well from it, 
on a tube-like pedicle, allowing a free expansion to them 
on all sides. The colour of the whole is a delicate 
light blue, something like the colour of the large blue 
Clematis (0. cccrulea grandiflora), or between that and 
the blue of the Agaj)anthus. Altogether it is a most 
beautiful thing. There were from ten to twelve full 
expanded blossoms on each spike, occrqiying a space of 
about a foot in length; but when the plant has more 
time, under good cultivation, we may expect all this to 
he much increased. 
The Skinmiia japonica was named by Thunberg, and 
described in his “ Flora Japonica,” in 1784, when he 
returned from his travels in the East to occupy the 
same chair from which he received tlie first lessons in 
botany from Linnseus himself. Ur. Siebold missed this 
plant, as also did Hensall. But Mr. Fortune, always 
lucky, got hold of it, and the Messrs. Standish and 
Noble, of Bagshot, have brought it out in first-rate 
style ; as all new plants ought first to be exhibited. It 
is a dwarf, bushy evergreen, which you might take for a 
Pontic Rhododendron at a little distance off, but the 
leaves are thicker, more fleshy, and not leathery, as in 
this Rhododendron. They are also of a darker green, 
quite smooth on both sides, and entire round the edges, ; 
and without stipules, like all Hollyworts, the order to 
which it belongs. It flowers in the spring in heads at 
the extremity of the branches, just like a Rhododendron. 
The flowers are quite small, individually; whitish, and 
as sweet as violets. The great beauty of the plant is in 
its berries. These are now of the same size and colour 
as those of a bright-berried Flawthorn or Holly, and 
stand out in irrominent clusters exactly as in the com 
mon ivy; but Mr. Fortime told me that when the berries 
are quite ripe, they are as bright and shine like corals. 
Here, then, is a new plant that will make a scarlet bed 
all through the winter, to succeed the Tom Thumbs, and 
is equally gay. I believe Thunberg said it grows a yard 
high, but Mr. Fortune did not see it more than half 
that height. It is very bushy, however, and all the 
better for being so dwarf. Wo have only to imagine a 
largo plot of ground quite covered with three-year-old 
seedling common Rhododendrons, and these studded all 
over the surface with Christmas holly berries, and that 
is just a picture of a bed of Skimmia japonica, as nearly 
as I can paint it. I shall go down to Bagshot some 
day to learn bow they increase it, what kind of soil it 
likes best, and all about it. There were berries enough 
on the plant that was exhibited on this occasion to 
produce some hundreds of plants; for all the berries in 
this small order yield from two to six seeds each, and 
the plant seems to flower as early from seeds as the new I 
Rhododendron ciliatum, that is, in two years at the 
farthest. 
The next best plant on the table for a gardener, ac¬ 
cording to my ideas, was one of those dwarf small¬ 
flowering Chrysajithemums, called Pompones. Some of 
us gardeners are really very stupid, and more stupid 
than the rest were those of us who railed against Mr. 
Fortune for sending home a still more stupid thing, as 
they called the pretty Chusan Daisy. But a gardener who 
had seen more than half round the world, and who could 
send a covey of daring pirates to another kingdom with 
an old blunderbuss, was not born to be stupid. The first 
moment he put his eye on this daisy, the image of a now 
race rose before him, and here am I recommending the 
very earliest of this race, called llendcrsonii, because it 
comes in full three weeks before the old Chrysanthemums, 
just at that period of the whole year when house flowers 
are scarcest. It is as pretty as any of them; brownish- 
yellow, and as double as a batchelor’s button. The 
plant was also the best grown in the room, and I think 
it was from our own garden, at Chiswick. I hope the 
judges will bear this in mind next show day, and not be 
led away by the size of the flowers of Chrysanthemum. 
We in the country, and all who have a grain of common 
sense, look for the greatest quantity of well-formed 
flowers which a given plant is capable of sustaining 
under a system of close specimen kind of growth. 
You may just as well give sweet cakes to a baby’s 1 
doll, as give away our money for cut flowers of the Chry¬ 
santhemum, for that will never raise gardening one 
inch on the scale of excellence; and if you urge that 
the ladies like to see them better that way, you must be 
met by the fact that far better samples of skill and 
ingenuity may be seen in the shop windows of the 
milliners. 
The most celebrated plant in the room was a cut 
specimen, in bloom, of the true Pemvian Bark tree 
(Cinchona calisaya). The first, as wo were told, that 
has flowered in Europe. It was from the Society’s 
garden. The flowers are produced, as in Ixora, of a 
pale whitish colour, but the plant is not worth growing 
for the flowers. Solandra lavis was there also, from the 
garden of the Society. A first-rate stove plant that 
blooms always at this season, and seems much easier to 
flower than the old S. grandiflora, but the flowers of 
both are much alike, large, white, and somewhat bell¬ 
shaped. No plants are more easy to grow and propa¬ 
gate, but the difficulty is to flower them well; and the 
way to do that is to give them a long season of rest in a 
perfectly dry hot atmosphere, without a drop of water 
till the young wood begins to shrivel. This lawis is 
rather new, having only flowered for the first time in 
England in 1847, at Mr. Pince’s nursery at Exeter. 
There was a nice-looking Oesnera from Mr. Glendinning, 
which looked as if it were a cross between qmrpurea and 
discolor. A fine dwarf jfiaut of Medinilla Sieholdii was 
there in fruit and flower. The flowers are pale pink, in 
bunches; and I believe they said the bemes were to be 
of a high colour when ripe ; it seemed the best of them 
for a small house, as this plant was quite bushy, and 
not higher than a fancy geranium. A fine tall plant 
of Diehorisandra coming into flower,—a very useful 
thing at this season, and easy enough to grow and 
flower in a stove, and then to stand in a flower-house 
for full two months in fine blue bloom. This is, also, 
one of those free-and-easy plants from the stove that will 
grow out-of-doors from the end of June, and look better 
than in the orchid-house. I had it so growing many 
years since. But speaking of house plants for out-door 
culture reminds me that we had here a new rival for the 
variegated and blotched-leaved section, which I wish so 
much to see tried in the open air in July, August, and 
September. It was from Mr. IjOW, of Clapton, where I 
saw lots of it when I went to learn about the packing 
for long voyages, and where I booked it, and a great 
many other things, for these pages. 'The name is 
Plectranthus concolor-picta, a plant looking somewhat 
like a Salvia splendens, but with leaves much paler, and 
of more varied outline; and in the centre of each leaf 
there is a large blotch of purple-brown, as if a painter 
had touched it with his brush accidentally. It is, cer¬ 
tainly, unique, and well worth adding to every collection 
of variegated plants in the kingdom. ’The less that is 
said about the flowers of any Plectranthus the better. 
There was a fine specimen, in the shape of a cut top, 
of the Aralia japonica in flower, from Mr. Snowq gar¬ 
dener to Earl de Grey. It was the finest of the kind I 
ever saw, and it was but one panicle out of a great many 
now adorning this very fine shrub, and as it is very 
seldom seen, I must give some idea of it, as I always 
attempt to do when I write about any new or uncommon | 
