842 
THE GARDENING WORLD. 
January 28, 1893. 
Nursery of Messrs. Paul & Son. He then went out 
to the Cambridge Botanic Garden, Massachusetts, 
where his brother was curator, he having succeeded 
in that capacity, Mr. William Falconer, now of Glen 
Cove, and who in the seventies was well known in 
London as a horticultural journalist. At Cambridge 
Mr. Manda stayed until the firm of Pitcher & 
Manda was founded in 1888, when he went to 
Short Hills to take charge of the herbaceous 
department, but came over here with the stock of 
Chrysanthemum Mrs. Alpheus Hardy, in January, 
1889, and started the business he is now carrying 
on, first at Dulwich, and now at Hextable, with 
every prospect of success. 
-- 
Gardening Miscellany. 
c Jj 
THE R.H.S. FLORAL COMMITTEE AWARDS. 
I do not care to criticise the acts of the Royal 
Horticultural Society's Committees if to be avoided, 
but I must say that I was surprised at one of the 
decisions of the Floral Committee on the 17th inst. 
There could be no question whatever but that the 
most remarkable and meritorious plant exhibit of 
the winter w r as Mr. Jennings’ splendid group of 
Begonia Gloire de Sceaux. True, the plant is not 
new, but at least no one has done it in such remark¬ 
able form as Mr. Leopold de Rothschild’s gardener, 
and as seen it makes the very finest flowering and 
foliaged pot plant for winter work that has been 
seen for a long time. It was not some two or three 
plants, but a splendid group of a score, and all 
superbly grown and bloomed. It w'as a case for a 
Gold Medal if the society had such an award to 
make ; as it was the committee gave the group a 
Silver Banksian Medal. But then, to my surprise, a 
very common-place group of late cut Chrysanthe¬ 
mums got a similar award. They w'ere very fair 
flowers for the time of year, but not at all equal to 
what has been seen from Knebworth and elsewhere ; 
not comparable for quality to some blooms staged 
by Mr. Owen, and literally [miles less meritorious 
than w'ere the Begonias. Whatsoever of honour 
the committee proposed to pay to Mr. Jennings for 
his splendid lot of plants was entirely discounted by 
its other very unfortunate award .—A Fellow. 
BOTTLED GRAPES FROZEN. 
Having cut some late keeping grapes and bottled 
them in the usual way, we put them into an unheated 
fruit room. During the late severe weather the 
water in the bottles was frozen into blocks of ice for 
a fortnight, but the grapes look none the worse for it 
at present. Will it injure their keeping qualities? 
J. R. IF. [If the w ater was frozen, the berries were 
frozen too, and we should expect decomposition to set 
in quickly. We have had no experience of frozen 
grapes, and should be obliged if our correspondent 
would let us know the ultimate result.— Ed. j 
4-- J 
AZALEA MRS. STOGDON. 
Flowers of a very beautiful Azalea of this name 
were left with us the other day. They are 
single, pure white, and even at this early period of 
the year measure a little under 3 in. in diameter 
The segments are very broad, much imbricated and 
undulated or crisped round the margin, like a regal 
Pelargonium of the Madame Thibaut type, only they 
are pure white. Some connoisseurs and florists like 
flowers of evenly rounded outline and having the 
segments flat; but we know from the classes of 
various plants which have been created under the 
title of decorative, that the masses of the people 
delight in something of free and easy outline, inde¬ 
pendent of the florists’ notibn to the contrary. The 
foldings or undulations give a richness of appear¬ 
ance to the flower that could hardly fail to be 
appreciated. The leaves accompanying the flower 
were of a rich dark green, and leathery in character. 
CALLIPSYCHE AURANTIACA 
The species of Callipsyche are very curious plants 
and possess a certain amount of attraction, but lack 
in ornament considerably on account of the want of 
leaves. The latter are not fully developed till June, 
although the flowers are produced in January or 
February. Some plants flow’ering recently in the 
Begonia house at Kew had scapes about 20 in. high, 
bearing about six flowers in an umbel. The flowers 
are deeply six-parted, and similar in form and colour 
to those of Hemerocallis flava, only considerably 
smaller, and ultimately they fade almost to white at 
the margin as they are going past their best. One 
of the most striking features of all the species of 
Callipsyche is the length of their stamens. In the 
plant under notice they are pale yellow, and three 
times as long as the perianth segments ; the anthers 
are brown. The leaves when produced in summer 
are oblong and stalked, with a cordate oblong lamina 
somewhat similar to those of a Eucharis, Eurycles, 
or Griffinia. The species comes from .the Andes of 
Ecuador, where it grows at an elevation of 8000 ft., 
and requires the temperature of an intermediate 
house. 
BROMELIA FASTUOSA. 
This may be reckoned one of the giants of the 
family, although it is exceeded in bulk and stature 
by several others, some of which are in cultivation 
and others not. It is too large, however, to make its 
way in gardens generally and too spiny to permit of 
easy handling. The leaves are linear, grooved, and 
3 ft. to 4 ft. long, with spines on the edges directed 
forward and incurved. The central flov^er spike is 
only 2 ft. long, and therefore more easily accommo¬ 
dated. For some time past a large plant of it has 
been fruiting in the Victoria house at Kew. The 
flowers are purple and scarlet, but the fruits are 
more striking on account of their large size, great 
numbers, and rich yellow colour. The pannicle of 
berry-like fruits is spindle-shaped, bearing ellipsoid 
fruits that vary in size from that of a small to a 
large Gooseberry. They look tempting enough to be 
edible. It has several names, such as B. sceptrum 
and B. antiacantha. 
ARDISIA TRIMACLLATA. 
The general habit of this plant is similar to that of 
A. mamillata, but the leaves are not liable to the 
same objection of having a dense coating of coarse, 
bristly hairs upon them. In A. trimaculata the 
leaves are oblong, revolute at the margin, deeply 
channelled along the centre, and of a dark green. 
Like A. mamillata it is a very dwarf grower, with 
stems only 2 in. to 3 in. high, terminating in 
numerous short shoots bearing clusters or 
umbels of bright red berries of good size. It is a 
recent introduction from China, and may be seen 
fruiting in the stove at Kew. 
CYRTANTHUS CARNEUS. 
This appears to have been introduced to cultiva¬ 
tion many years ago, but apparently has never been 
extensively cultivated in this country. The bulb is 
of large size with a long neck, and pale brown outer 
scales. Leaves are not produced till after the 
flowers are over. The scape rises through the long 
neck and reaches a height of 2 J ft., bearing a drooping 
umbel of flowers about 2£ in. long. They are cylin¬ 
drical and slightly widened upwards to the short 
six-lobed lamina, and are flesh coloured, with the 
tube shaded with yellow and the segments edged 
with rose. It is a native of the southern provinces 
of Cape Colony, and is allied to another species (C. 
obliquus) from the same district. A plant may be 
seen flowering in the Begonia house at Kew. The 
chief objection to it with gardeners is the want of 
foliage when in bloom. 
ISOLOMA HYPOCYRTIFLORUM. 
A considerable number of the members of the 
order Gesneraceae receive only a fitful attention in 
the hothouses of this country. Many of them of 
course are only to be looked upon as tropical weeds, 
but others are really showy and useful plants. Some 
flowers of the plant under notice have been sent us 
by Captain Robert Twiss, Birdhill House, Birdhill, 
Limerick, and which, although not so showy as some 
of the family we possess, yet it must be a useful 
decorative plant seeing that it flowers with Captain 
Twiss for ten out of twelve months of the year. The 
flowers are produced in clusters of four to six in the 
axil of each leaf as the plant elongates, so that the 
stems are always well furnished with bloom, in fact 
are one mass of bloom, according to our correspon¬ 
dent. The flowers themselves are orange-red, tubular, 
swollen in the middle and much contracted under the 
five-lobed and small lamina, which is densely spotted 
with black on a yellow ground. The corolla is 
velvety and the reflexed calyx even more so. The 
leaves also are velvety and emerald green. The 
species was introduced from Ecuador in 1866 and is 
figured in the Botanical Magazine , t. 5,655, under the 
name of Gloxinia hypocyrtiflora. 
TREES IN FRENCH 
CITIES. 
The United States Consul at Bordeaux, in a recent 
report, says that one of the beauties of the larger 
French cities, and second only to their e lifices and 
monuments, are the trees. The almost interminable 
vistas of chestnuts and acacias stretching along the 
broad avenues as far as the eye can reach, their 
bending branches almost touching one another in an 
endless arch of verdure, form not only a delightful 
perspective for the eye, but serve to add beauty to 
cities already beautiful. This, however, is not the 
result of nature’s handiwork alone, for science and 
art have lent their aid. The planting, as well as the 
maintenance, of trees in French cities is an item of 
no little importance in the annual budget prepared 
by the municipal council, which does not look upon 
their preservation as of less consequence than the 
repairing of the roadways or the lighting of the 
streets. The climate and soil of France are not 
suited to the nurture and growth of every tree, so 
those chosen to line the avenues and boulevards of 
the cities must be selected with no little judgment. 
Chestnuts thrive wonderfully ; they grow well on a 
not too rich or generous soil, but require frequent 
watering at the roots. Elms are favourites with the 
professional landscape gardeners, though they are, 
unfortunately, extremely susceptible to destruction 
by worms and insects. Maples grow slowly, but are 
hardy and strong. Add to these the Acacia, the Lin¬ 
den, the Sycamore, the Oak, and the Button-wood, 
and the list of trees that live and thrive to advantage 
in the great continental cities is nearly complete. 
France imports a great many of her fruit as well as 
shade trees, and the utmost care is taken where they 
shall be planted. Handfuls of earth from every 
place where a tree is to placed are carefully examined 
and analysed. Upon ground rich and moist the 
trees from the United States grow best. A sandy 
soil is most favourable to resinous trunks, and so on. 
In squares and parks, though more especially along 
the principal thoroughfares, where the trees are 
planted about 20 ft. apart, particular attention is 
given to the replacing of the dead or dying by 
healthy trees of the same species. In this w r ay the 
line of perspective is never broken, nor is the eye 
repelled by the absence of a single trunk. One reason 
for the great care which the French bestow upon 
their arteries of traffic is that the nation spends, 
whenever the weather permits, the best part of its 
leisure time in the open air.— The Surveyor. 
--*•- 
ORCHID NOTES AND GLEANINGS, 
Cattleya Percivaliana Wellsiana. 
From the first, C. Percivaliana was known to be 
variable particularly in the hues of the lip, but it is 
now evident that some of the fcrms are so distinct 
as to be worthy of a special name. The other day 
we received four flowers, all quite distinct, from 
Messrs. Pitcher & Manda, of the United States 
Nursery, Hextable, Swanley, Kent. The subject of 
this note was the most interesting because an albino. 
The sepals and petals were pure white, and the lip 
tended in that direction. What should have been 
crimson-purple shaded with maroon in the centre 
was reduced to a bronzy orange, extending from the 
middle of the lamina to the base of the tube. The 
upper portion was blush, shaded with rose over a 
small area close to the bronzy orange. The outside 
of the tube was yellowish and lilac at the margin. 
The flowers were fully as large as an}’ of the others 
with a much undulated and crisped but w'idely ex¬ 
panded lamina, and altogether a showy and distinct 
thing. Another flow’er of fine form was a richly 
coloured one. The sepals and petals were rosy lilac 
like the type, but the lip was of a rich purple with a 
large maroon-crimson blotch, covering great part of 
the centre; below this was a forked and xvedge- 
shaped, orange band, while all the interior and the 
side lobes were of a rich dark purple striated with 
white and yellow lines. The lip, on the whole, w’as 
of large size, undulated and reflexed rather than in¬ 
curved all around the sides, and expanded for half 
way down the tube. A third variety had a long tube 
with a notably small, roundish, but rich crimson- 
purple lamina edged with lilac. The fourth had a 
long, narrow lamina to the lip, purple, deepening to 
crimson in the throat, then an orange blotch and 
bronzy crimson to the base with a broad, blush- 
