22 
THE FLORIST AND POMOLOGXST. 
[ February, 
THE OTAHEITE ORANGE. 
HERE tliere is a considerable demand 
for decorative plants, any subjects 
that will last throughout the winter 
months, and yet look well, are to be considered 
as a boon to the gardener. I can recommend 
the above-named dwarf Orange as one of the 
best of all decorative plants at that season ; 
and whether placed as a centre-piece on the 
dinner-table, or on the side-tables, it will be 
equally effective, especially when the plants are 
freely furnished with well-coloured fruit. We 
had several of them, which caused quite a sen¬ 
sation when used in this way; and afterwards, 
whenever any large demands were made for 
plants for the table, the Oranges were always 
to be included amongst them. The plants bore 
from a dozen to sixteen good-sized, well-coloured 
fruit on each, and when I state that such results 
can be obtained on a plant in a G-in. pot, the 
fact that they are most useful and most telling 
for this particular purpose will not be disputed. 
The preceding winter we had something like 
six fruits on each plant. 
In the spring of 1880, about the month of 
March, when overhauling some other stove- 
plants, the Otaheite Oranges were taken in hand. 
They were turned out, and the roots carefully 
examined, all the old, inert soil being picked 
away, and the drainage renewed. They were 
then repotted in clean pots of the same size as 
those in which they had previously grown, and 
were plunged in bottonr-lieat, where they re¬ 
mained all the summer, during which period 
they were well attended to with water, and re¬ 
ceived copious daily syringings—except just 
while any of the flowers were open, or when 
the weather was cloudy and sunless, or likely 
to be so ; under these circumstances, the 
syringe was withheld. 
As soon as the flowers were set, and the pots 
were well filled with roots, manure-water was 
given always, until the fruit was nearly ripe, 
when the plants were lifted out from the 
plunging material, placed on a shelf near the 
glass, and gradually hardened off to stand in 
the cool greenhouse, where they have been the 
last six weeks, that is, since the middle of 
November, except when doing duty in the 
dining-room. I think that they look better in 
this room than any other subjects we have 
as yet employed. 
The compost in which we find these Oranges 
to do best consists almost wholly of loam, with 
either a few half-inch bones or charcoal to 
keep the soil open ; good drainage is indis¬ 
pensable to their successful culture. A dozen 
plants in G-in. pots, nicely fruited, will be 
found a great help in winter decoration; be¬ 
sides which they last so long, not being so 
tender as many other stove plants. When 
repotting, it is better to take off all the pre¬ 
vious j'ear’s fruit, as then all the energies of 
the plant go to the formation of fresh wood 
and fruit.—A. Henderson, Thoresbij. 
JASMINUM GRAC1LLIMUM. 
f HIS beautiful novelty is one of Mr. 
Burbidge’s discoveries in Northern 
Borneo, and it was through his instru¬ 
mentality that it was introduced to the estab¬ 
lishment of Messrs. Veitcli and Sons, of 
Chelsea, by whom it was exhibited in a beautiful 
flowering state in December last at South 
Kensington, and received the well-merited re¬ 
ward of a First-class Certificate. It is extremely 
floriferous, bearing its dense panicles of flowers 
along the whole length of its slender branches, 
and continuing to flower for a long period in 
winter,qualities which will render it exceedingly 
valuable, both for decorative purposes and 
for bouquet work, as the flowers exhale a 
delicious perfume like that of the popular 
Jasmimm Sambac. 
Jasminum gracillimwn , so named by Sir 
Joseph D. Hooker in the Gardeners Chronicle 
(whence we borrow our illustration), is a stove 
plant, with slender elongate branches, which 
are terete and hairy. The leaves are from one 
to one and a half inch long, opposite, shortly- 
stalked, ovato-cordate acute, hairy beneath. The 
flowers grow in dense globular drooping pani¬ 
cles, and are shortly stalked, the corolla being 
white, with a tube two-thirds of an inch long, 
and a limb one and a half inch across. 
The plant is a very near ally of the well- 
known Jasminum pubescens of India and China, 
which Sir J. Hooker regards as “ the type 
around which are to be ranged a good many 
closely-allied species, differing in habit, in the 
amount of pubescence, and in the size and 
number of flowers, and of the divisions of the 
corolla, all of them natives of Eastern Asia and 
