September 22. 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
479 
LEDEBOURIA HYACINTHINA. 
This is a very pretty north-of-India bulb; a half- 
Ixia, half-Amaryllis plant, like Brodiwa and Leucocoryne, 
to both of which it is very nearly related, and will grow 
as easily as the now common Brodicea grandiflora; but 
I cannot trace it to any collection, and I am not sure 
if it is now in the country. Can any one tell me? 
LIBERTIA. 
These are not actually bulbs, but they look as if they 
ought to be bulbs, and might be grown in a border, 
I without prejudice to a collection of bulbs. They are Iris¬ 
looking plants, with the flowers shaped as in the Pea- 
i cock-iris, or Sisyrinchiums and Gypellas. They grow in 
either peat or sandy loam ; formosa, the Chilian plant, 
is all but hardy, if not quite so. The Australian ones, 
frame plants, that would grow and flower out-of-doors 
during the summer. Mr. Anderson, who sent home 
Fuchsia micropliylla, found Liberlia formosa in the 
Island of Chiloe, growing down to the edge of the tide, 
whence he sent it, and other curiosities, to Mr. Low, 
of the Clapton nursery, more than twenty years ago. 
Grandiflora is an older plant from New Zealand; pani- 
culata, fine, and pulchella, from New Holland, are quite 
as gay as any of their allies, the Morceas, from the Capo; 
paniculata, and the snow-white flowers of formosa, would 
make a desirable cross, besides rendering the pnnicled 
breed more hardy. It will be difficult to find them in 
collections, as they go under various names, as Sisy- 
rinchium, Morsea, Marica, and Iris. 
LILIUM. 
The true Lilies are so well known, and their proper 
cultivation so generally understood, that I need not 
dwell on them particularly as hardy bulbs. The Japan 
longi/lornm and eximium, with the varieties of speciosum, 
now called the Japan Lilies, and the great Indian Lily, 
yiyanteum, which are the chief that would fall into my 
province, have all been treated of already in these pages; 
besides, Mr. Appleby has a very good paper on Lilies in 
general, in a former volume, so that 1 am forstalled in 
that direction. 
MARICA. 
This genus, with its beautiful ephemeral flowers of a 
day, is also out of my beat here. They are neither 
bulbs nor half-hardy, but stove-plants, with the habits 
of the common Iris; yet I have seen them growing 
out-of-doors in summer, and I believe the greenhouse 
I is the proper place for them during seven or eight 
months in the year. They all require strong, rich loam, 
and in that tho greenhouse is too cold for them in 
winter; and in the spring they delight in the strong 
moist heat of the stove, up to May. Marica cccrulea 
and Northiana, are two as beautiful flowers as we can 
grow, but, unfortunately, they only last a few hours, and 
only two or three in a day; although, strong, old plants 
of them keep throwing up a daily succession of them 
for some weeks. 
MASSONIA. 
The only beauty in all the Massonias is in their 
broad recumbent leaves, two of them only coming at a 
growth, or in one season. These lie flat on the pot or 
border, right and left, and from between them rise a 
host of small white flowers in a cluster, with hardly the 
semblance of a scape or stalk. Angustifolia, an odd 
one we missed in The Dictionary, lias the leaves upright, 
and not so broad as in the others. Daubenyas are only 
coloured Massonias, as far as gardeners are concerned. 
All of them delight in rich sandy loam, and grow in 
winter with us. 
MELANTHIUM. 
This has been an ill-used genus; after being named 
from the dark and dingy flowers, the species with such 
tints have been weeded out of it, aud named Wurmbea, 
yet no one sees Melanths in cultivation in these days ; 
at best, they are only botanical plants, with Ixia-like 
leaves, short spikes, of small inconspicuous flowers, and 
slender bulbs, requiring about equal parts of peat, and 
loam, and pot-culture. 
MILLIA. 
Millia bielora. — This is really a very beautiful 
plant, with large white flowers as pure white as snow; 
they last a long time, and come in succession, and they 
are as hardy as to live out-of-doors with a slight pro¬ 
tection. The name Biflora is a very great mistake, by 
Cavanilles, I believe. 1 never saw one without four 
flowers in the umbel, and the peduncle is three or four 
inches long. The Horticultural Society introduced it from 
Mexico, and spread it far and wide among the fellows; 
and if ever a bulb was worth caring for this is one ; it 
lasts a long time in bloom, and is more fitted for a 
south border than a pot, being long-legged and the parts 
slender: it will grow in any good light soil all the 
summer, and go to rest for five months in the winter. 
The other one, called uniflora, I think, has not been 
much tried. I never saw it, and I think there is some 
mistake about the naming of it. 
MONTBRETTIA. 
Montbrettia ixexuosa and virgata are two little 
flowers from the Cape, with exactly the same habit and 
constitution as Ixias, and require the very same kind of 
treatment. The genus is in dispute, no two agreeing as 
to what it is, or should be. The Botanical Magazine 
calls flexuosa a Morcca. It is a little bright yellow 
flower; the other is a slender plant, with a purplish 
bloom, and was also called a Morcea by Jacquin, who 
first discovered it. Sweet and Don, however, place them 
both as Homerias; I believe on account of their mona- 
delphous stamens. 
NERINE. 
This is a small group of true African bulbs, with the 
same habit and constitution as the Belladonas, or true 
Amaryllis All those who have studied African bulbs 
believe Nerine to be only a well-defined section of the 
Amaryllis, and many attempts have been made to get 
crosses between the two, but, hitherto, with no success, 
although they readily crossed one with the other, and 
produced some fine flowers. Like the Watsonias, there 
is a great family likeness between the species; the 
flowers of some of them are wavy, stamens and all, but 
growing upwards; and about half of the species, in 
addition to this wavyness in the sepals, roll back like a 
reflexed Fuchsia, or Tiger Lily. The Guernsey Lily, 
Nerine sarniensis, is one of these reflexed ones ; they all 
flower in the autumn, after a rest of four months, 
chiefly before the leaf, but some of them show the 
leaves and flowers simultaneously. Marginata is of 
this habit, and is the one with a red margin to the leaf 
that we want so much, from the west coast of the Cape 
colony, as it is all but certain to be the one that will 
cross with Amaryllis, and so join tho two sections. 'They 
grow from September to May, require abundance of air 
all the winter, and when once the leaves are full grown, 
by the end of February, they require to be well pushed 
on for the rest of the spring, with additional warmth ; 
but they are not so thirsty as Amaryllis, nor do they 
like such strong loam, but in peat some of them spawn 
so much with offset bulbs, that they will not flower at 
all; a soft, yellow loam, well-reduced with white sand, 
is best lor them in pots; if they are planted out in a 
frame, or turf-pit, along with Brunsvigias, which is the J 
best mode of growing them, the soil is not so particular, j 
so that it is not too strong to set hard about them. In j 
Australia, the Nerines are as hardy as Crocuses, and j 
