October 2. 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
8 
deners to the blush, and whose enthusiasm seemed 
boundless. This series of shows for 1851 was a revival 
of exhibitions after a considerable lapse of time, and 
enough was done to shew that the Society will be second 
to none among those of the provincial cities. 
The uncertainty of last year’s Dahlias has not been 
so much complained of as the retrograde 'movement in 
quality, coarseness, and sunk centres; and had it not 
been that some of the growers gave prizes for the best of 
last year’s flowers let out by them, very little would have 
been seen of them. The most beautiful flower of the 
season was Barmaid, let out by Turner. The most perfect 
and certain was The King , let out by Morgan. Nil despe- 
randum was the most showy, but it has the great fault 
which would spoil the best flower in all other respects, 
the petals do not meet as the flower naturally grows, 
and all the dressing that can be given will not wholly 
remedy the defect. Mrs. Hansard was the best fancy; 
but if we get one of the same colour without the indent¬ 
ation at the ends of the petals, this must give way 
another year. Admiral has been useful, but cannot be 
compared with Fearless. E, Y. 
NEW PLANTS. 
THEIR PORTRAITS AND BIOGRAPHIES. 
Dense-flowered AVallich Palm (Wallichia densi- 
flora). — Botanical Magazine, t. 4584.—Whether we 
regard the stately habit of the Wallichia caryotoules, the 
palm on which this genus was founded by Dr. Rox- 
I burgh, the great beauty of the Wallichia spectabilis, or 
the elegance of this comparatively little palm before us, 
the subject of our present biography, we believe few will 
dispute the taste which suggested the genus to comme¬ 
morate the name and labours of Dr. Nathaniel AVallich, 
late Superintendent of the Botanic Garden at Calcutta, 
, and the more so, when we remember that the author of 
it, Dr. Roxburgh, was his immediate predecessor in the 
directorship of the same garden. We submit this 
! example of disinterested kindness to the serious consi- 
: deration of gardeners; for how often do we find the 
very contrary spirit exhibited by some of them towards 
both their predecessors and successors in the cares of 
the garden; but this should not be—charity and good¬ 
will should prevail over all our relations and actions in 
life. Several other botanists of eminence have showed 
their desire to compliment the great demonstrator of 
Indian botany “by a like compliment,” and the syno¬ 
nyms which have accumulated to the genus Wallichia 
in consequence, have been the source of error on the 
part of Endlicher and Lindley in their enumeration of 
genera. AVe, therefore, hail, with great pleasure, the 
following extrication of this botanical web by the inde¬ 
fatigable researches of Sir W. Hooker:— 
“ In as few words as we can,” he begins, “ we must 
show the right that Roxburgh’s plant has to the name 
Wallichia , in preference to the Wallichias of other bota¬ 
nists, who have delighted to honour our friend by a like 
compliment. Though the Palm had been long thus 
named by Dr. Roxburgh, it was not published till the 
appearance of the third volume of the ‘ Plants of Coro¬ 
mandel,’ under the direction of Robert Brown, Esq., in 
1821. In 1824, Dr. Hamilton published this identical 
Palm, under the name of Harina, in his Commentary 
on the Hortus Amhoinensis, inserted in the fifth volume 
of the ‘ Transactions of the Wernerian Sooiety of Natural 
History.’ ” Sir AV. Hooker also shows a long list of 
Wallichias by other authors, and traces them to the 
dates of their published origin, and they are shown to 
have been of later dates; so that now, at last, this Palm 
is established on its true foundation, and, as Sir W. 
Hooker says, “is well suited to commemorate Dr. Wal- 
lich’s labours in the field of science. His extended 
knowledge, and his splendid works on Indian botany, 
his liberal contributions to Kew, and to every celebrated 
garden in Europe aud the colonies, and his generous 
and encouraging bearing to every student of plants, 
justly entitle him to a name among the “princes of the 
vegetable kingdom.” 
Wallichia densijlora is an elegant stemless Palm, a native 
of Assam, and of forests which skirt the base of the Eastern 
Himalaya from Kamaon, at an elevation of some two thou¬ 
sand feet above the level of the sea, where it was discovered 
by Dr. Thomson, and from whence it was introduced to the 
collection at Kew some years since. It will he found a fit 
associate with Cycads, as Dion , Zamia, and such palm-like 
plants, to represent the noble family of Palms on a minor 
scale. Eesides the beauty of its spreading frond-like leaves, 
it is very handsome while in fruit, and being a Monoecious 
plant, it carries the male and female organs of reproduction 
on different stems (spadix) on the same plant. These j 
spadices, or flower-stems, issue from among a central tuft of 1 
coarse fibres. The male stem is first hid in a large imbri¬ 
cated sheath, called a spathe, which is of a dark purple 
colour streaked with yellow; hence arise the male flowers in 
dense clusters, and nearly white. The female is a com¬ 
pound spike, with violet-coloured fruit or ovaries. This and ; 
all the allied tribes delight in strong turfy loam, and their 
large spreading roots suck up large quantities of rich water 
when the plants are in good health and growing in strong | 
moist heat. Palms are now arranged in five divisions, or 
sections, and this belongs to the first and largest section, 1 
Arecads , which is called after Areca, the Cabbage-tree Palm, j 
and in the system of Linnaeus our plant is arranged in the 
sixth order of the twenty-first class, Moncecia Hexandria. 
AVe cannot close this notice without reprinting what we 
wrote in 1843, when the experience of Dr. AVallich’s excel¬ 
lencies were freshly impressed on us. Happily our forebod- 
