May 2nd, 1885. 
THE GARDENING WORLD, 
553 
MR. THOMAS MOORE. 
If in connection with the Eoyal Horticultural 
Society, or the Lindley Library, we had a gallery 
of portraits of eminent horticulturists, a prominent 
position on the line would by right have to be given to 
that of the gentleman whose counterfeit presentment 
we have to-day the great pleasure of presenting to our 
readers, Mr. Thomas Moore, for assuredly of all living 
horticulturists, none have a more legitimate claim to 
such a position of honour and distinction. For over 
forty years, in an extremely modest and unostentatious 
manner, Mr. Moore, by his contributions to horti¬ 
cultural literature, and in other no less useful ways, 
has devoted his time and energies to the diffusion of 
sound and valuable information on the principles and 
practice of gardening, and to the promotion of every 
movement having for its object the welfare of horti¬ 
culture. 
Mr. Moore was bom on the 29th of May, 1821, 
at Stoke-next-Guildford, Surrey, and commenced his 
gardening career in a private establishment in the 
same county. After serving as a journeyman in one 
or two other gardens in Surrey, Mr. 
Moore went to the Eoyal Botanic 
Society's Garden at Eegent’s Park. 
In 1844 he brought out his first 
work on gardening, The Cultiva¬ 
tion of the Cucumber and Melon, 
which was highly praised at the 
time as “ substituting something 
like rational language fit for the 
consideration of rational beings, for 
the receipts which are only to be 
compared to those in our grand¬ 
mother’s kitchen-book.” Four years 
later, on the late Mr. Eobert Fortune 
leaving the Botanic Garden of the 
Society of Apothecaries at Chelsea, 
to go to China, Mr. Moore became 
curator of that establishment, an 
office which he still holds, and which 
his friends hope he may have health 
and strength to hold for a long time 
to come. From his youth Mr. Moore 
had a strong penchant for the study 
of Ferns, of which he subsequently 
became the recognized historian. In 
1848 he published his Handbook of 
British Ferns, which became a popu¬ 
lar work when the Fern-collecting 
craze was at its height nearly thirty 
years ago. Ferns and Allied Plants 
followed in 1851, and five years later 
was published The Ferns of Great 
Britainand Ireland—Nature Printed. 
In the following year, 1857, his 
Index FiliCum and Illustrations of 
Orchidaceous Plants made their 
appearance ; and in 1859-60, Octavo 
Nature-printed Ferns, in two volumes, 
was issued from the press. From 
Ferns, Mr. Moore about this time 
turned his attention to other subjects, and The Field 
Botanist's Companion : British Isles, was published in 
1862, and Elements of Botany in 1865. 
But while Mr. Moore had been busy at his books, 
his pen had also been busy in other directions ; thus 
during 1850-2 he was joint editor of The Gardeners' 
Magazine of Botany, and for several years from 1861 
he edited The Floral Magazine, now defunct. He next 
became editor and proprietor of The Florist and 
Pomologist, which ceased to exist at the end of last 
year. In 1866, he edited, and Messrs. Longmans 
published, The Treasury of Botany, a work in two 
volumes which every young gardener should strive to 
possess, and which we cannot better describe than as a 
dictionary containing “ a short history of those genera 
of plants which are known to possess special interest 
on account of the medicinal qualities, or the com¬ 
mercial uses of their species, or by reason of their 
beauty or utility as garden plants.” In 1873 a new 
edition was called for and issued in a revised form, 
and with the addition of a supplement. In 1878 came 
out a new edition, revised and extended by Mr. Moore, 
of that most popular of all gardening books—Thom¬ 
son’s Gardeners’ Assistant, —and we next find our 
author contributing the article 11 Horticulture ” to 
the Encyclopaidia Britannica, which was subsequently 
recast, extended, and illustrated, and, with an intro¬ 
ductory chapter on the principles of horticulture by 
Dr. Masters, was issued in a separate form as The 
Epitome of Gardening. 
For a year or two previous to the death of Dr. 
Lindley, Mr. Moore assisted him in editing The 
Gardeners’ Chronicle, and on the demise of “ the 
Doctor” in 1865 he became co-editor of that journal 
with Dr. Masters—a position for which he was 
eminently qualified by reason of his possession of a 
vast store of horticultural lore, scientific, practical, 
and personal, and his unrivalled knowledge of plants. 
This position he occupied until the end of 1881, when 
the severance of his connection with The Chronicle 
was taken advantage of by his personal friends to 
present him with a piece of plate and a substantial 
pecuniary gift. 
It will be remembered also by many that Mr. Moore 
carried out in the most successful manner the duties 
of Exhibition Secretary of the Great International 
Horticultural Exhibition held in 1866, and of which 
there does not seem to be any prospect of our seeing 
the like again. On the purchase of the Lindley 
THOMAS MOORE, E.L.S. 
Library with a portion of the surplus derived from “ the 
International,” Mr. Moore was appointed one of the 
Trustees, as he was also of the Memorial Fund which 
was raised a few years later to perpetuate the memory 
of the late Mr. James Veitch; he has also been 
secretary or treasurer or member of the committee 
of many other movements—a member of the Com¬ 
mittee, for many years, of the Gardeners’ Eoyal 
Benevolent Institution, a member for many years too 
of the Floral Committee, of which he was secretary 
from 1859 to 1865, and for several years Floral 
Director of the Chiswick Gardens, besides having been 
Examiner in Floriculture to the Eoyal Horticultural 
Society, as well as to the Society of Arts. 
— a — 
ACHIMENES IN BASKETS. 
I shall never forget the sensations of admiration 
and wonder with which I beheld for the first time 
the extraordinary baskets of Achimenes the late 
Mr. Thomas Speed used to grow at Chatsworth, and 
I have no doubt are still grown by his successor, 
Mr. Thomas. The large wire baskets were round, a 
good thick fining of Moss being placed next the wire- 
work, and then the baskets were filled up with a 
mixture forming a rich compost : then the plants 
started in heat were planted out. When they were 
fir advanced enough, the baskets were hung up in the 
Victoria Eegia house, and there formed masses of 
flowers of stupendous dimensions. As a matter cf 
course they were kept well watered, and had every 
attention. The sorts grown in this way by Mr. Speed 
were Baumannii hirsuta, Karl Wolforth, Ambrose 
Verschaffelt, Longidora, Longiflora major, Margaretta, 
Dazzle, Mauve Queen, Mauve Perfection, and Harry 
Williams, a capital selection, with flowers of varying 
sizes and of different and at the same time distinct 
colours. In many places baskets of smaller dimensions 
might be grown with comparative ease.— Quo. 
— g_. - — 
A TITANIC FLOWER. 
A wretched specimen of the Puya or Chaguale 
flowered at Kew last spring, and excited much 
attention, and I struggled to draw it in all the glare 
and discomfort of the Cactus-house, not venturing to 
ask that so precious a plant should run the risk of 
catching cold by being taken to my 
room there. Here (Chili) there are 
three kinds growing in quantities, 
each in its peculiar locality. The 
largest has a yellowish-green flower, 
and is seldom far from the seaside. 
Its proportions are those of a Lon¬ 
don gas-lamp, the flower-head even 
longer than the lamp, often over a 
yard long, and it is a most noble 
object when seen standing above its 
rosettes of Pine-like leaves, among 
the rocks and cliffs, with the sky 
and sea behind it of that deep blue 
and purple one only finds among 
volcanic rocks. The blue variety 
grows farther inland in the valleys 
and rocky clefts high up; whole 
hillsides are often covered with it, 
and I have seen twenty-five flower- 
stalks rising from one mass of 
leaves, which are silvery and most 
beautifully curved like some of the 
Bilbergias, its cousins. I shall 
never forget the first time I saw 
them growing when climbing in 
search of them near the Baths of 
Apoquindo ; the clouds overtook me 
and hid everything for awhile, till 
I saw those tall flowers like ghosts 
close to me, then a snow-peak far 
beyond, and then I got into a new 
■world of wonders, with blue sky over¬ 
head and a mass of cotton-wool 
clouds hiding all I had left below, 
and the strange Puya flowers for 
company and plenty of time to study 
them. 
About sixty branches are arranged 
spirally round the central stem, 
each a foot long, and covered with buds wrapt in 
flesh-coloured bracts. These open in successive 
circles, beginning at the base; the three flower 
petals at first opening are of the purest tur¬ 
quoise-blue, then they become darker, a mixture 
of arsenic-green and Prussian-blue, the third day 
a greyer green, and then they curl themselves up into 
three carmine shavings, and a fresh circle of flowers 
takes their place outside, so that the longer the plant 
has been in bloom the larger its head becomes, and 
as the heads of the spikes or branchlets bloom last 
it loses its form and looks ragged and disreputable. 
Its stamens shine like gold in their polished metallic 
blue caps, and it is marvellously beautiful at first. The 
third kind is smaller, and its flowers thin and of a very 
dark blue, but its bright pink stalk is very effective 
when seen against the grey stones. The gum of the 
Puya is valuable as a medicine, and resembles gum 
arabic. Near the Puya the tall Cactus generally grows 
its pillars, often 6 ft. or 8 ft. high, crowned with white 
trumpet-flowers and buds, and ornamented with a 
parasite whose white and scarlet berries are eatable. 
I found that the flowers never faced the same side 
as the parasite; the former were as large as a German 
beer-glass, and their foot-stalk was full of sweet juice, 
most refreshing to suck on the dry hillside, and less 
stupefying than the usual contents of such glasses.— 
Miss Marianne North in Pall Mall Gazette. 
