300 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
July 21. 
and beneath this the most intense frost has little power. 
This covering remains untouched in conical heaps 
until the early part of March, when, or in some years a 
little earlier, cracks, or fissures, may be seen in these 
tan hillocks, a warning that the kale buds are very 
active, and that their arrival may be expected daily. 
Henceforth, the only thing is to look at the Kale two 
or three times a week; for in dry weather the old tan 
will trickle away from the crowns, and will require, 
about once a week or so, to be drawn into compact 
hillocks again. R. Errington. 
i HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY’S EXHIBITION.— 
9th July. 
The weather all this week was very uncertain. On | 
Thursday night we had a fearful thunderstorm round j 
London, and incessant sheet lightning from all parts of 
the compass for three hours or more. Friday was a hot, 
j hazy day, and Saturday morning, the morning of the 
! show day, was ushered in by a heavy rain, but the day 
cleared up by the time the plants were staged, and kept 
on improving till late in the afternoon; the day was 
not hot for the time of year, and damp grass in July 
never frightens any one, so that the last show day j 
here for this season was as enjoyable as could be. The j 
plants were not quite so numerous as on the two last 
occasions, but they were extremely well grown, and in ! 
greater variety than I recollect for a July Show. The 
fruit was in far greater quantities, and in much better 
style, than it was ever seen before at this, or at any 
other garden, including Covent Garden itself; for al¬ 
though waggon loads of fruit may be seen there every 
day in the week, very little of it is more than three-parts 
ripe, and it used to be the same at these garden exhibi¬ 
tions, but the judges on fruit tightened the reins, and 
here is the result. One hundred and seventy entries of 
fruit were made here that day, and such fruit shall not 
be seen again till this time next year at the same place. 
Her Majesty and the Duchess of Sutherland were up to 
the winning post close together. It is always an in¬ 
structive sight to see such distinguished personages con¬ 
tending for such prizes at a public exhibition. Her 
Grace was there, aud saw how the prize went with great 
good humour. 
New Plants. —One would hardly believe that a plant 
which has been under cultivation in this country for the j 
last thirty years could now be classed amoug new 
plants, yet I must so class it, for I never saw it in flower 
before, aud I have seen as many flowers as most men. 
Disa grand.ifi.ora, a ground Orchid from the Cape, is as 
fine a thing of the kind as is to be met with anywhere; 
but, unfortunately, it is one of the most difficult plants 
in the world to keep or to manage well. I have myself 
gone so far with it as to send a scientific person 
to the spot where it grows, on the summit of the 
Table Mountain, behind Cape Town, to register the 
weather, moisture, and other points, all the time it 
was growing and flowering. 1 had plenty of ripe 
! tubers of it, with all that could be guessed about its 
, proper culture, and fresh tubers over and over again, 
yet I never could keep it more than two years; and I 
never saw a live flower of it till this day, and I have 
known a German gardener, returning home from Baron 
Ludwig’s garden, bring a large box full of the roots of 
this Disa to pay his travelling expenses. One of our 
first nurserymen bought them all, and sold them out, at 
a high price, among some of the best gardeners in the 
whole world, but not one out of the lot had ever flowered. 
[ I have seen many better looking, and much stronger 
plants of it, than the one now in flower, and some day 
or other 1 shall sketch out the way to keep it healthy 
for a certain time, at least. It looks much like one of 
our own common Orchids when not in flower, throws 
up a stalk six to ten inches long, with the flower or 
flowers on the top like our Bee Orchis, only a little 
stronger. The flower is most beautiful, and unlike any 
we know in cultivation. It comes nearest to a Cypripe- 
dium flower, but has only three principal parts, two side 
wings, as it were, and a central hood turned upside- 
down, and opened in front so as to look like a hand- 
scoop ; the wings or sepals are of a rich orange-scarlet, 
and the scoop is French-white, lined, and veined all 
over with bright pink, after the manner of an Abutilon 
flower. There was only one flower on the plant. 
Lapageria rosea. —There was a noble plant of this 
splendid climber, from Mr. Veitch, trained on a Laurel 
trellis, four or five feet high. It had fifteen of its large, 
rosy, drooping, Lily-like flowers open, and a finer hardy 
climber was never seen. Some doubt its being quite 
hardy, but knowing the very spot where it comes from, 
and all about it for years past, I have not the smallest 
doubt myself of its being perfectly hardy with us, in dry 
soil, just like Bomarea (Als train evict) acutifolia, and the 
same treatment will do for the two exactly. Besides, the 
very first living plant of it I saw was three years ago, 
with Mr. Low, at Clapton, after standing out that tre¬ 
mendous hard spring, under a common hand-light, in 
the open border of the “ American ground.” 
Treated as a hardy plant, this most lovely Lapageria 
rosea ought to be cut down in the autumn like a hop, 
then for the first few years some coal-ashes should be laid 
over the roots to save it from any very hard frost, until 
the roots were old enough to stand any degree of cold. 
None of the gardeners with whom I spoke pronounce 
this name right, and it is very difficult for an English¬ 
man to manage the right sound of g in this name. A 
Scotchman can catch it directly he hears it sounds like g, 
in geek, as Burns lias it in “ Tiby I bae seen the day 
“ Ye geek at me because I am poor.” 
For geek, say geria, on the Cal ton Hill, and you have 
Lapageria to a T. The derivation of it is, that it was a 
second or third name of the Empress Josephine, the 
first wife of the first Napoleon, and the plant is in every 
respect worthy of the fame of that amiable woman. 
The next plant is still newer, and by some will be 
considered a better one than the last, for this is the first 
time it has flowered in Europe; but it has been well 
known to gardeners for the last five years by a figure of 
it, with full descriptions, in the Gardeners' Chronicle for 
1848, page 87, where it is first called the Long-flowered 
Hornberry, or Ceratostema longifiorum , from heras, a 
horn, and sterna, a stamen, as our Dictionary gives the 
derivation; but it is not a stove plant, as there set forth, 
for Mr. Lobb gathered the seeds at 12,000 feet elevation 
on the Peruvian Andes. “ The genus derives its botanic 
name from the long horns which terminate the stamens. 
The English word Hornberry may be taken as a fair 
translation of it.” All the Vacciniums , or Cranberry 
order, being called by some kind of berry, as Blaeberry, 
Bilberry, Cranberry, and such like, Hornberry comes in 
most fortunately. That is the way to name plants. 
Everybody seems to know Hornberry already, and 
before this long-flowered Hornberry is described. Well, 
it is “ one of the prettiest of evergreen shrubs (a little 
out of the common, of course), with the foliage of one 
of the small evergreen Vacciniums. Its long, trumpet¬ 
shaped flowers are of a rich purple, and grow in loose 
clusters at the end of the shoots.” Such is the author’s 
account of it. My notes say—A bushy plant, with an 
excellent habit for a specimen plant; the branches 
growing close, but with a free style of growth; the 
leaves, small, thick, smooth, and blunt; the wood half¬ 
succulent, indicating, with the thickness of the leaves, a 
plant naturally liable to excessive drought at times, and 
