46 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
[April 24. 
which the order of Nightshades is named, an order com¬ 
prising from nine hundred to a thousand species, the 
Half of which is included in the genus Solarium itself. 
The order contains the narcotic poisons Henbane, Man¬ 
drake, and Deadly Nightshade, with others more or less 
virulent, all or most, of which, however, are valuable 
medicines in the hands of practitioners, though dan¬ 
gerous to, and always to he suspected by, such as are 
not aware of the force of their natural qualities. Other 
species are pungent and powerful stimulants, as Cayenne 
pepper, which is the ground pods, &c., of a species of 
Capsicum, while the tubers of the Potato supply whole¬ 
some food for man. 
The genus Solandra, as now restricted, is a small one, the 
species, however, are no less remarkable for their beauty 
than for the large size of their flowers, more especially 
Solandra grandiflora, which in many countries is trained like 
the Glycine sinensis, and attains to an equal size, dowering 
on the spurs and young wood made during the previous 
year. A few years hack there was a large plant of it trained 
against the garden wall of the Governor of Malta, at St. 
Antonio, where it covered a surface fifty or sixty feet in 
length, and flowered magnificently in the early part of 
summer. Can any reader inform us if this plant is still 
living, and what the dimensions are ? From what we know 
of the different species in other countries, we believe all 
Solandras would flower more freely if they were subjected to 
a dry greenhouse treatment from October to April, and 
great heat and sunlight when they were growing. They 
were in great repute formerly with our gardeners, but from 
a supposed difficulty of bringing them into flower they have 
undeservedly fallen into great disuse of late years. Sweet 
recommended strong soil for them, and great heat when 
growing ; and he recommended to propagate them by young 
branches after they were ripe, so that they might flower 
in small pots. No plants can be more easily increased or 
preserved. 
The genus is in honour of Dr. Solander, a Swedish natu¬ 
ralist, a pupil of Linnaeus, and the companion of Sir Joseph 
Banks, in Captain Cook’s first voyage round the world, on 
whom devolved the arrangement of the botanical researches 
of the voyage, which, with his other manuscripts, are now 
in the British Museum, where Dr. Solander was once under¬ 
librarian. His perfect acquaintance with the sexual system 
of Linnfeus gave a great stimulus to the cultivation of bota¬ 
nical science in this country, where it was but very imper¬ 
fectly understood previously to his arrival in 1760, and thus 
it supplied the cradle in this country to the more useful and 
now more sought after natural system of Jussieu. 
Solandra leevis is a native of Guatemala, and is synony¬ 
mous with the Solandra grandiflora we have already men¬ 
tioned, and which was found by Hartweg in the mountains 
of Quezaltenango. The flowers are pale green, and about 
seven inches long. 
Linden’s Uroped (Uropediurn Lindenii). — Gardeners' 
Magazine of Botany, ii. 219.—This is a new and extra¬ 
ordinary genus, even among Orchids, and was recently 
named by Dr. Lindley, from oura, a tail, and pedion, a 
slipper, alluding both to the extraordinary long appen¬ 
dages to the flower, more than two feet long in the wild 
specimens, and to the slipper-like form of the lip, as in 
the Cypripeds ( Cypripedium), to which Uroped is the 
nearest in affinity. The specific name was given by 
the same author in compliment to M. Linden, a conti¬ 
nental collector who travelled in South America, and 
whose great success in discovering and bringing over 
alive many of the rarest and finest orchids in the new 
world was attested by his sales of them in London in 
1847 and last season. Uropediurn Lindenii sold at the 
latter sale at prices varying from two pounds six shillings 
to nine pounds, prices considered by some to be about a 
fourth of their value. These collections -were chiefly 
from Colombia, in South America, better known as New 
Granada, Venezuela, and Ecuador. Dr. Lindley has 
written a half-crown pamphlet describing M. Linden's 
Orchids, by the title of “ Orchidacecc Lindenianee, or 
Notes upon a Collection of Orchids formed in Colom¬ 
bia and Cuba by Mr. J. Linden.” 
In this pamphlet we were first made acquainted with the 
subject of our biography, “ one of the most extraordinary of 
known orchids.” Those of our readers who may have 
