220 
THE GARDENING WORLD 
December 3, 1887. 
paraffin oil when Crotons are infested with scale, as is 
so frequently the case. A few dressings will entirely 
cleanse the plants. Always allow the top lights to be 
open for a short time about mid-day, in order to purify 
the atmosphere, which, from continual firing and 
damping, becomes unpleasantly “stuffy.” 
The Earliest Roman Narcissus are in flower, 
and have been placed in a cool house. These, when 
cut and placed in glasses with their own foliage, are 
much liked, and form a pleasing contrast. Attention 
should be given to the watering of borders in which 
Roses may be planted. Very frequently they are under 
stages or other out-of-the-way places, and are over¬ 
looked until later on, when the blooms are noticed not 
to be so good as usual nor so effective in colour. This is 
little to be wondered at when all but the strongest 
roots have been allowed to perish for want of water. 
The soil should never be allowed to become dry, at the 
same time avoiding the danger of its being soddened. 
Camellias. —In case of Camellias not opening so 
fast as required, place a plant or two in the intermediate 
house, and when requiring water, let it be given nice 
and warm, and the plants be kept frequently syringed 
overhead ; none are so useful for this purpose as the 
old varieties, red and white Fimbriata. If the pots 
are well filled with roots, an occasional dose of 
liquid manure, composed of soot and cow-dung, should 
be given, but be careful not to overdo it, as they are at 
all times most impatient of over-Vatering. 
Chrysanthemums. —Go carefully through the stock 
of Chrysanthemums and see that all are correctly 
labelled. Many will now be quite ready for propaga¬ 
ting, particularly those intended to furnish exhibition 
flowers, and also for the making of specimens ; but 
February will be found quite time enough for the stock 
intended for greenhouse staging, or other work where 
small pots must be used. By keeping them so long on 
hand the plants become impoverished, and by the time 
flowers are looked for most of the foliage has been lost, 
and they are rendered useless except for massing. 
THE FORCING HOUSES. 
Early Vines. —In the case of damp or foggy 
weather prevailing, it will not be advisable to syringe 
the early Vines, which will now be started, until the 
temperature of the house is risen to that accorded by 
day, viz., 65° ; and at the same time, no matter what 
the weather may be outside, a chink of air should be 
put on to allow of the escape of excessive moisture. If 
this is not attended to damping of the young shoots 
may follow ; and while the nights are so long be very 
careful, as before advised, not to maintain a too high 
night temperature. Do not by any means let it exceed 
55°, or the growth will become very spindly, and the 
clusters are very apt to run out unless the Vines are 
in full vigour. 
The Early Peach House should now be started 
if fruit is required at the beginning of May ; and for 
this to be done, the trees should have been subjected to 
forcing for a few seasons previously, or success is not 
always certain. Frequently trees unduly excited cast 
their fruit when no danger is apprehended by the cul¬ 
tivator, simply for want of forethought on his part. 
Early forcing of all kinds needs the greatest care and 
the most mature consideration before it is embarked 
upon. Let the trees be kept frequently syringed during 
the day, and air must be put on early each morning. 
While the weather keeps open avoid fire-heat at night 
by all means ; but the pipes may be nicely warmed in 
the morning, after which close the valves. 
Strawberries. — As there are very frequently 
shelves in the Peach house, these may be filled with 
pot Strawberries, the mild treatment given to the 
Peach trees being exactly suited to the starting of the 
Strawberry. We find Keen’s Seedling the most 
reliable for first work ; but many prefer Viscomtesse 
Hericart de Thury, though, like many more of these 
earlies, it is so apt to give a lot of small fruits. Where 
very early Strawberrres are required, it is far preferable 
and safer in every way to specially treat them—that is, 
by the making up of a gentle hot-bed of Oak leaves in 
a heated pit, whereon a sufficient number of plants 
should be placed, keeping them as near the glass as 
possible, and always allowing them a chink of air. By 
this means the plants make but little growth, yet the 
trusses come up much stronger early in the season than 
if started on shelves in the usual manner. 
THE KITCHEN GARDEN. 
The Weather keeping fine and open digging must 
be proceeded with, taking care not to depart from the 
well-considered course of cropping chosen for next 
season. Before severe frosts set in Globe Artichokes 
should be protected round the collars with long stable 
litter or bracken, after which a good dressing of rich 
manure should be given to the quarter, and in digging 
throw up the soil as roughly as possible to become 
well pulverised. Although they are apparently some¬ 
what indifferent as to treatment, there is a vast amount 
of difference in the quality of the heads produced when 
highly cultivated ; moreover, it will be found advisable 
every second or third year to form a new plantation. 
(I used the word advisedly, as all surplus heads in the 
season should be cut, and preserved for winter use). 
If left too long the stools are apt to become merely 
shells, and do not give the necessary “fat” heads. 
To make new plantations, suckers should be taken from 
the best forms of the old stock during September, and 
planted on a previously prepared quarter, simply 
protecting them later on from frosts. 
Mint and Tarragon roots should at once be lifted 
and placed in heat ; the last named is generally so 
much in demand that the stock should be prepared for 
forcing. In case of rain, stakes should at once be 
prepared for the Raspberries ; the whole square should 
be carefully gone through, removing any decayed 
stakes, and replacing with new ones, tying the canes 
neatly with twine, and as soon as weather permits, 
manuring and putting in order for the winter.— Walter 
Child, Croome Court. 
-- 
ORCHID NOTES AND GLEANINGS. 
Orchid Growers’ Calendar. —At this season 
those plants which do so well in baskets or on blocks 
or rafts suspended from the roof, while enjoying their 
elevated position themselves, are, if not well looked 
after, likely to cause mischief to those occupying the 
stages below them. It may safely be asserted that no 
Orchid likes to have a plant suspended over it, and 
that where it is possible, or as far as possible, hanging 
plants should be arranged over walks or places where 
they have no plants immediately under them. Where 
large numbers of plants are grown, this cannot strictly 
be carried out, and where plants must necessarily be 
suspended over others, every care should be taken to 
render the probability of ill effects as remote as possible, 
by seeing that nothing is suspended over very rare or 
tender specimens, by frequently changing the relative 
positions of the hanging plants, so that they are not 
suspended over the same plants for too long a time, by 
always taking them down to water them and allowing 
them to drain, so that not a drop of water shall fall on 
the plants below when they are replaced, and by always 
seeing that they are perfectly clean and free from 
insects before returning them to their places, otherwise 
a few suspended plants neglected supply noxious insects 
for the whole house. 
Cockroaches and crickets get active and cause much 
mischief, their depredations being the more actively 
carried on as the necessity for artificial heat in the 
house increases. Now is the time to exterminate them 
by placing some of the poison usually used for the 
purpose, about at intervals, not desisting so long as one 
of them is about. 
Pleiones, as they go out of flower, should be re-potted 
if they require it. These plants grow best in pans or 
half pots suspended in a cool intermediate house. As 
soon as they are seen to be freely rooting a liberal 
supply of rain-water should be given them. Provided 
they be grown in a fitting situation and manner, almost 
any kind of mixture will do to plant them in. I have 
cultivated them all well in peat alone, in loam fibre, 
and in sphagnum moss ; but the best material, perhaps, 
is two-thirds peat and one-third sphagnum, to which 
may be added a sprinkling of pure charcoal and a little 
loam fibre. 
The Temperatures for the Month of December 
should be :—Warm or East Indian house, 65° to 70° by 
day, 65° at night; Cattleya or intermediate house, 
60° to 65° by day, 55° at night; Odontoglossum or cool 
house, 50° to 55° by day, 45° at night. — James 
O'Brien. 
Lycaste Skinneri alba.— The flowering season 
of the Lycastes is now again in full swing, and those who 
possess newly imported, and as yet unflowered batches, 
will be eagerly on the outlook for new and beautiful 
forms. One of the finest'forms of L. Skinneri that has 
ever been imported is that under notice, and which is 
now flowering finely in the collection of F. G. Tautz, 
Esq., Studley House, Hammersmith. The sepals, petals, 
and labellum, with the exception of the crest of the 
latter, is pure white. The crest in the various forms 
grown is liable to a great amount of variation with 
regard to colour. In many cases it exhibits deeper 
colouration than any other part of the flower, while in a 
few rare instances it is uniformly yellow, although the 
other parts of the flower may be more or less deeply 
coloured. In the present instance it i3 of a pale lemon 
colour, but with that exception there is nothing else to 
mar the purity of the flower ; and even that is of little 
consequence, from the fact of its being hidden, or nearly 
so, in the throat of the flower. 
Cymbidium Mastersii album. — When 
visiting the Clonmel Chrysanthemum show, the other 
day, I was very much pleased to see, amongst the 
subjects lent for decorating the room, a plant of this by 
no means too common Orchid, from the collection of 
G. Gough, Esq., Birdhill, carrying a seven-flowered 
spike of its chaste white blooms, having only a small 
yellow blotch on the surface of the lip, and without 
the purple markings usual in the species. The flowers 
are smaller than those of the typical form, which may 
improve as the plant becomes better established, this 
being its first inflorescence since its importation. Mr. 
O’Brien informs me the same variety has bloomed with 
flowers of the usual size at Glasnevin this year.— E. D. 
Oncidium Jonesianum. —The more we see of 
this beautiful species the more we admire it. When 
first flowered in this country many were impressed that 
the sepals and petals were too much suffused with green 
for the species ever to be reckoned as a showy and 
ornamental one. That stigma has now been removed, 
and as the plant flowers from year to year it grows in 
esteem, and rightly so. From the pendent and in¬ 
conspicuous tuft of deep green cylindrical leaves one 
would hardly expect to obtain a drooping or arching 
raceme of large and beautifully-marked flowers, like 
that for which it is now notable. The sepals and petals 
are beautifully and conspicuously blotched with brownish 
purple on a white ground, the purity of which is only 
marred by a staining of pale green at the base. The 
labellum is pure white, marked with some purple 
blotches near the base. The cultivation of this species 
is now better understood than when imported, and its 
requirements are few, namely, to be tied to a raft or 
piece of wood with a little piece of sphagnum, its leaves 
being pendent, and to be hung up near the light. Mr. 
Cowley, gardener to F. G. Tautz, Esq., Studley House, 
Hammersmith, has had it in flower for some time. 
Cattleya bicolor.— Amongst the known forms 
of Cattleya, this one is highly interesting from a 
botanical point of view owing to the fact that it is the 
only species with an undivided lip. This latter organ 
is oblong and wedge-shaped at the base, and in its best 
form of a rich crimson-purple ; but varieties crop up in 
batches of imported plants having a pale rose lip, and 
this, again, may be variously spotted or banded with 
white. The normal and what may be taken as the 
commonest colour of the sepals and petals is an olive- 
brown or greenish brown, the former of which is 
probably the commonest. It was originally introduced 
by Messrs. Loddiges, of Hackney, in 1838, which would 
be close on half a century ago. The modest appearance 
of the flowers, compared with those of the gorgeous 
Cattleyas of the C. labiata group, would readily account 
for its being less common in collections than the date 
of its introduction would lead us to infer. From the 
circumstance of its undivided lip, as already stated, 
considerable interest attaches to the species, nor is it 
altogether devoid of beauty. We noticed a flowering 
specimen the other day at Melbourne Lodge, Ealing, 
under the care of Mr. J. Ross. 
Acampe multiflora. —Lindley described this 
Orchid under the name of Yanda multiflora in his 
Collectanea Botanica, t. 38, but it seems he had his 
doubts upon its being a true Yanda from the floral 
construction, it being different from that of a true 
Vanda. It has also received other names by different 
authors, but it agrees very well with the other known 
species of Acampe, with the exception that the peduncle, 
or flower stalk, is greatly elongated or somewhat 
panicled, whereas, in the other species, less ornamental 
and mostly confined to botanic gardens, the flower 
stalks are very short. A. multiflora is a strong-growing 
or robust-habited plant, with the general aspect of a 
Yanda, and the medium-sized flowers are transversely 
banded with deep red lines od a yellow ground. The 
lip differs in being of a pale or lemon-yellow, with a 
few red spots. The whole flower is of a waxy or 
fleshy consistency, and lasts for some time in perfection. 
Mr. E. Chadwick has succeeded in flowering it well at 
Hanger Hill, Ealing, the residence of E. M. Nelson, 
Esq. The plant was unnamed, and from its general 
appearance was reckoned a Vanda until it flowered, 
the foliage being very similar. 
