180 
THE FLOEIST AND POMOLOGIST. 
[ December, 
deep, with a thorough drainage of broken 
bricks, &c. I find it delights in abundance of 
water, with liquid manure once a week, but 
care has to be taken that the soil is kept per¬ 
fectly porous. I believe this to be the main 
point in insuring vigorous growth and good 
flower-heads. The plant here has at the pre¬ 
sent time three flower-heads, each having borne 
over forty flowers, on growths 12 ft. high. This 
species may probably be hardier than I have as 
yet ascertained, but grown as I have already 
treated it, it is a grand plant, and is, moreover, 
evergreen. 
There are several other species well worth 
growing, and which thrive under similar 
treatment. Thus, B. Caldasii is a very fine 
plant, bearing large heads of orange-coloured 
flowers on stems from ten to twelve feet. B. 
acutifolia^ with red and yellow flowers, is a very 
handsome plant. B. multiflora^ with the flowers 
orange and green, beautifully spotted, will, 
when well grown, bear as many as one hundred 
flowers on one growth, and is particularly 
ornamental when the seed-vessels burst, and 
expose to view its bright coral-like ripe seeds. 
B. oculata is a comparatively small species, 
growing from four to five feet high, and 
bearing clusters of rosy-purple spotted flowers. 
—Chables Geeen, Gardener to Sir G. 
Macleay^ Bart., Pendell Court, Bletchinghj. 
THE BEST HABDY CLEMATISES. 
OW that the list of varieties of this 
popular flower—deservedly popular, since 
it furnishes us with one of the most 
gorgeous floral attractions of the late summer 
months—is becoming lengthy, it may be useful 
to take advantage of some notes made during 
the blooming season to make a selection of the 
most showy and striking sorts for general culti¬ 
vation. Our notes were taken on the occasion 
of a visit to the nursery of Messrs. G. Jack- 
man and Son, of Woking, where one of the 
most extensive collections to be found in this 
country is grown. 
The Clematises that flower during the late 
summer season belong to the sections represented 
by C. Jachnanni, Viticella, and lanuginosa. 
The flowers in the varieties of the Jackmanni 
type, which are four to six-sepaled, are large 
and bold, and being produced in profusion and 
in succession, the plants make and keep up a 
great display. Those belonging to Viticella are 
similar, but more frequently four-sepaled, and 
in some cases not quite so large in size, 
but flowering in great masses and continuing 
long in bloom. Between these groups, the 
line of division is perhaps more artificial 
than natural. The lanuginosa varieties are 
larger than either in the size of the flowers, 
which are commonly eight-sepaled, but the 
blossoms are fewer in number, and therefore do 
not often present themselves in dense mass, as in 
the former cases ; but they come on in succes¬ 
sion, so that interest in the plants is kept up 
till frost closes the season. It is to these three 
groups that the varieties named below belong, 
and they have been selected with a view to 
supply diversity of colour and habit, combined 
with the greatest perfection of the flowers, for 
in the lanuginosa varieties especially there are 
some which have the sepals not only narrow, 
but narrowed to the base, so as to leave open 
spaces between them, and these are by no means 
so handsome as those in which the sepals, by 
reason of their breadth, overlap, and form a 
full flower. 
None are so good or so effective amongst the 
dark purple-flowered sorts as C. Jackmanni and 
C. rubella, both of the true Jackmanni type, 
and both having a central tuft of green staminal 
filaments ; they differ, in the former having the 
flowers of a deep blue-purple, while in the 
latter, they are flushed with velvety maroon- 
crimson, so as to take on a rich reddish tinge of 
colour, which contrasts well with the purples. 
These two should always be planted, whatever 
else is grown. Another pair of fine purples, 
which differ from Jackmanni in the tint of 
purple being of a pucy violet, but still more in 
having the staminal filaments conspicuously 
w’hite, are found in C. Alexandra and 0. 
Thomas Moore ; both these are very showy free- 
flowering sorts, of the same group as the fonner, 
and quite worth introducing, for the fine effect 
produced by the light-coloured stamens, which 
bring out in the blossoms a certain degree of 
resemblance to those of a Passion-flower. 
The variety C. tunbridgensis is of a much paler 
shade of purple, more nearly approaching to 
blue, the flowers being six-sepaled, and of a 
fine full form. C. Mrs. James Bateman has a 
reddish-lilac shade in the newly-opened flowers, 
the older ones becoming bluish-lavender. C. 
