THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
August 18. 
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O i O 
some very rare Cape plants, exhibited from Sir John 
Herscliel, who flowered them in his open garden, in 
London: they were— Satyriums, Cyanellas, and a rare 
Vieusseuxia, and it was in answer to an inquiry by the 
Society, as to the circumstances under which these and 
such plants are naturally found, that w r e first heard 
about those of Disa. “Its habitat,” replies Sir John, 
“ is on the margin of pools of standing water, on or 
near the summit of Table Mountain, the drainage of the 
boggy slopes of the mountain, where its roots are im¬ 
mersed. These are dry, or nearly so, in summer. Jn 
such localities, it is, of course, frequently involved in 
the dense mist of the clouds, which even in the hottest 
months often cover the whole summit of the mountain 
for a week or a fortnight uninterruptedly. I presume, a 
moderately warm, habitually damp, atmosphere, would 
suit it.” This, ten years after this suggestion, twelve 
months of “ moderately warm, and habitually damp, 
atmosphere,” may have helped the flowering of Disa 
grandijlorct. When I say that Ixias may bo growing on 
the dry banks of these boggy “ pools,’’ and only a few 
yards from the Disa, whose roots are immersed in water 
all the year round, it will give some idea of the difficulty 
of knowing how to deal even with two plants from the 
same locality, without a precise knowledge of their na¬ 
tural habitats. The sailors give the name of “ table¬ 
cloth,” to those white, misty clouds, which envelope the 
mountain top so often, and for so many weeks at a 
time. The high winds which sweep over the mountain, 
are, for nine months in the year, loaded with vapours 
from the South Pacific, and although they may affect 
the vegetation on the summit, generally, such plants as 
grow low down in hollows, like this Disa, may uot 
require, under cultivation, such currents of ventilation, 
as we know to be highly essential to Cape Bulbs in 
general. These data, therefore, would imply the follow¬ 
ing, as a rational mode of cultivating the Disa :— 
The tuberous roots to be planted rather deep in pots 
of sandy peat, very well drained, so as to allow of large 
supplies of water during the summer, without fear of 
any stagnation at the roots; from April to October, a 
damp atmosphere and free ventilation would be secured 
easiest by plunging the pots in moss, in a cold pit, 
which should be open, or ventilated at back and front, 
and the moss kept constantly moist. A greenhouse 
would be quite damp enough for it in winter, De¬ 
cember, January, February, and March, being the hot, 
dry months at the Cape; and there can be no doubt now 
but the plant must be kept growing all the year round, 
else what is to become of those healthy young shoots 
which are now pushing up all round the flowering parts 
of Mr. Leach’s beautiful plant. I shall not lose sight 
of this plant; and as Mr. Leach is seldom absent from 
our meetings in Regent-street, I shall have no difficulty 
in learning all about it. Meantime, if the trade cannot 
supply a sufficient number of plants of it for others to 
experiment upon, let us send out a vessel to Simon’s 
Bay, with a dozen or two of AVardian cases, and let the 
butler or head-steward of the vessel go up to “ remove 
the cloth,” without any harm to the mountaineers, or to 
the new constitution sent out at last, and we shall soon 
have Disas enough, Herschelias, too, as well as all the 
Satyriums, of which candidum, carneum, cucullatum , and 
chrysostachyum, will need very sandy peat, and papil¬ 
losum good, rich loam, the same as for Valotta. The 
i Satyriums all require large doses of water in summer, 
j and complete rest after flowering, and as much sun-heat, 
while at rest, as can be obtained, 
i I am afraid to mention one-half of the Kitchen 
Vegetables exhibited on this occasion, for fear of setting 
! the young gardeners and the cooks at loggerheads; for 
I have had some hard scratches that way myself in my 
j day. I may state, in round numbers, however, that 
' Mr. Burns, gardener to Lord Stanhope, at Chevening, 
had the best of it; Mr. Smith, gardener to Mrs. Keay, 
of Little Blake Hall, AVaustead, second best; and Mr. 
Spivey, gardener to J. A. Houblon, Esq., of Halling- 
bury, near Bishop’s Strotford, third best;—that Mr. 
Burns had 70 kinds of things from the kitchen garden 
that day, or in the whole competition, I forget which; 
that Mr. Smith had 63 kinds, and Mr. Spivey 51 kinds. | 
Mr. Burns won all the best prizes of the last winter 
season offered by the Society, and Mr. Smith the second j 
best—besides, Dr. Bindley gave £b to be fought for as 
well. These two giants, however, swept off every far¬ 
thing of them ; but, unless we are all at war among the 
Cossacks next winter, Mr. Burns and other garden 
poets must look to their laurels, for I hear there is to 
be a tremendous rush for these prizes next winter. In 
a collection of Peas from Mr. AVrench, of London 
Bridge, was the tall Sugar Pea, about which Mr. 
Charles Dickens tickled the readers of “Household 
AVords” a year or two since. That is the pea they eat 
in Germany, and all over the continent, as we do Kidney- 
beans ; we saw pods of it snapping like glass, to illus¬ 
trate the lecture, showing it had none of the glove- 
leather-lining like other peas. In a large collection 
from the Society's garden, was a Cabbage called Sutton's 
Cornish, which we were told was one of the best and 
most useful, as the ribs of the leaves were as tender as 
marrow. In this garden they still prefer Knight’s 
different Marrow Peas as the most sugary; and I agree 
with them ; but 1 think their Raspberry ground is quite 
worn out, for they showed a dish of Rivers' Large- 
fruited Raspberry, which were certainly the smallest I 
have seen these ten years ; it would just take four of 
them to make one of the Fastolf exhibited by Mr. 
Youcll, of Yarmouth. I tasted six kinds of the little 
old-fashioned Gooseberries from our garden, and I won¬ 
dered that people so run after the great pudding-bags of 
berries from the Great North AA r esterns. Of these six, 
the Oval Red and the old Rough Red were the two best. 
Wilmot’s white and red Currants were particularly good. 
They always show new things from Paris, and other 
parts of France, from this garden; but they still keep 
up the useless pedantry of sending the French names 
with them, as if there was nobody about London who 
could translate the French labels. When shall the 
“ Mysteries of Paris” be done away with in our English . 
gardening ? 
New Salpiglossis and Lobelia. — There were six 
plants of the new scarlet Salpiglossis from Mr. Hen- i 
derson, of the Pine-Apple Place Nursery; and six of 
a new white variety of Lobelia ramosa. The Salpi¬ 
glossis is orange-scarlet, and would make a most beau¬ 
tiful bed. The white Lobelia will be very useful, but 
not so gay as the blue racemosa. 
Fruit. —There was a cut branch of a Red-berried j 
Elder, loaded with clusters of red currant-looking fruit; 
very pretty indeed. The sort is named Sambucus race¬ 
mosa. There was a Black Prince Pine, from Mr. J 
Fleming ; a kind I never recollect seeing before ; it ! 
was a beautiful-looking fruit, with a purplisli-red cast, 
and the crown rather that way; the weight was above 
5 lbs. There was a Queen Pine, from the Bishop 1 
of Salisbury, about the same weight. There were several j 
other good samples of this fruit, and all the other fruits 
in season ; but the only fruit more pointedly alluded to 
in the lecture was a dish of Figs, from Mr. Fleming, 
out of a new kind of fig-house erected last April twelve- 
months, and which is now imitated in first-rate situa¬ 
tions for fruit, as at the Duke of Bedford’s, Mr. Peto’s, 
&c. This new house is only six feet wide, and as much 
like the new glass walls as we could make out. 
There was a beautiful Forget-me-not ( Myosotis azoried) 
from the Society; and I was told, coming home, that it 
is no more than a biennial, and ought to be constantly 
kept from cuttings. There were lots of other plants 
