178 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
June 0. 
Strawberries aro more plentiful, and realise from Od. to 
Is. per ounce. 
The Flowers become more common, and are not quite 
so choice as they were a month or two ago, when they 
were confined to forced and stove plants; but still they 
are equally attractive, and the demand for bouquets is 
very brisk. H. 
BULBS. 
HIEPEASTEUM. 
( Continued from page 7.) 
The universal beauty of the flowers of this section 
of the Amaryllids 1ms been admired in this country 
by all who knew them, since the first day that Ama¬ 
ryllis regime flowered in England, and that was on 
the Queen’s birthday in 17:28, hence the name, “the 
Queen’s Amaryllis.” And from the day that Linnaeus 
instituted the genus Amaryllis, to supersede Tournc- 
fort’s Lilio-narcissus (Hortus ClifFortiensis, 1737), until 
the last fifteen or twenty years, the members of the 
genus, and the sections which the family runs into, 
have been a puzzle-peg to botanists themselves; no 
wonder, therefore, that gardeners have not yet been 
able to grasp the slippery points by which alone the 
natural limits between the different sections can be 
satisfactorily made out. Dr. Herbert was the first who 
distinguished this genus from the mass of allied bulbs 
referred to it by the illustrious Swede, in a letter pub¬ 
lished in the “ Transactions of the Horticultural Society,” 
where he followed out Linnaeus to the letter in calling 
it Amaryllis, not knowing then that Amaryllis was 
founded on the Belladonna. “ It was the exquisite 
blending of pink and white in that flower, as in the 
female complexion, that suggested the common name 
(Belladonna) in Italy, and to those lovely tints Linnaeus 
referred when he assigned to it the name of a beautiful 
woman,” the Amaryllis of "Virgil. As soon as Dr. Her¬ 
bert discovered the mistake, however, aud knowing that 
Hippeasters and Belladonnas could not be covered by 
one name, he goes on to say—“ I was not then aware 
that Linnaeus had given the name Amaryllis to Bella¬ 
donna, with a playful reason assigned; but as soon as 
I learnt it, I felt, besides the general law of priority, 
that the jeu d'esprit of a distinguished man ought not 
to be. superseded, and that no continental botanist 
would submit to the change. I therefore restored the 
name Amaryllis to Belladonna, and gave that of Hip- 
peastrum, or Equestrian Star, to this genus, following 
up the idea of Linnaeus when he named one of the 
original species Equestre .” Such is the true history 
and the reason for Amaryllis and Hippeastrum. 
If I live out this present month of June, I shall see, 
at least, fifteen thousand ladies dressed in their very 
best, and very many of them will have “ the exquisite 
blending” in greater perfection than cither Amaryllis or 
Belladonna; but you may travel the world ovtr and not 
meet with a fair one whose complexion will remind you 
of a single member of the Equestrian group, except, per¬ 
haps, brerifiorum, a Brazilian species', sent by Tweedie to 
the Glasgow Botanic Garden, where it flowered, while 
almost every one of the original species, at least, presents 
the star peculiar to the order; why, then, call them 
Amaryllis, in the face of all law and reason, as some of our 
best growers of them do to this day? Besides, there arc 
fifteen private marks by which a Hippeaster is known 
from an Amaryllis, the most conspicuous part of which 
is the fore-shortening of the front of the tube at the 
bottom of the flower, — abreviated in front, as they 
call it. In all the neighbouring bulbs, there is a ring 
between the tube, however short the tube may be, and 
tho upper part of the flower called the limb; this ring 
is the rudiment of the membrane so conspicuous in 
tho inside of Pancratium-like flowers ; and in every one 
of the Hippeasters in which it is manifest, it is reduced to 
a crescent, the front portion of it being lost by the 
shortening of that part of the tube; the middle of the 
crescent, at the back of the flower, is the highest part 
of it, aud the two ends incline down to the front of the : 
flower; tho stamens rise from the inside of tho crescent, j 
and they follow its course, so that their insertion is in | 
gradations from back to front, and, keeping this in 
mind, ono could tell the flower of a Hippeaster from 
any other flower in the order, if he had only one inch 
of it bearing tbe crescent and the insertion of the 
stamens; or, if the crescent is absent, the graduated 
insertion alone would determine the flower. These 
are the only answers I think necessary to a hundred 
questions as to what is the difference between an Ama¬ 
ryllis and a Hippeaster. 
From the days of Philip Miller to those of Robert 
Sweet, or, say, until within the last twenty years, the 
custom was to pot these bulbs when they were at rest, 
or immediately before they were set to grow; some 
growers shaking them out of the soil as soon as they 
went to rest, and others keeping them in the pots all 
the time, stacked away under the stages, or some warm, 
dry place during the rest time. Now, however, it is 
the universal practice to keep the bulbs in pots at all 
times, and to repot them just after they have done 
flowering, or, if they do not show for flower, to have 
them potted when the leaves are nearly full-grown. 1 
have myself used, or seen used, every place and compost 
that has been recommended for this family since 1820; 
and I have made as many experiments on them as any 
one, killed more of them than most people would be¬ 
lieve, and also brought more new ones into the world 
than would be convenient to number; and the end 
of all is this, that from the sowing of the seed until 
the future Hippeaster dies of old age, there is nothing 
so good for it as pure loam only, without any mix¬ 
ture whatever, except a little sand for seedlings and 
very young bulbs at first, but when they come to 
a flowering size, this loam cannot be too strong for 
them, but it should not be of a nature to bind hard 
after much watering. In all cases, the pots ought to 
be upright ones, not wide mouthed, till you come to 
specimen plants, and Nos. 16 and 12 pots, with one 
large old bulb in the centre, and four or six side ones 
all growing, and flowering, and going to rest together. 
A most beautiful cross Hippeaster flowered with a 
friend of mine since my last Bulb paper; it was in a 1 
l(i’s pot, with offset bulbs, and it had twenty-six flowers j 
open the same week. This pot does not cost him more j 
than one-half the care and labour, throughout tho year, 1 
than is requisite to get a good pot of Mignonette in 1 
flower at the same time. Indeed, Crocuses themselves i 
are more difficult to manage and to keep than Hip¬ 
peasters, except half-a-dozen sorts of border Crocuses. 
No stove is needed to grow a thousand of them to the 
utmost perfection, as they will grow a flower through ! 
the summer in a warm frame, and may be kept quite 
dry from October to March or April; and many of them \ 
are hardy greenhouse plants, and will flower out in the 
border, and have done so for years; and tho whole of ! 
them can be so managed as to begin their growth at 
any time during the whole winter, so as to have them 
in flower at any particular time. Besides, if one of 
them is healthy at the time of potting, and the whole 
bulb is covered with the right soil, no more is needed 
for the next seven years certain, but to water it, and to 
watch the times of growth and rest. 
The worst kind of treatment would bo to use peat and 
leal mould, with light loam, for a compost; to leave 
one-half of the bulb uncovered, to give too much heat 
