New Plants from Afghanistan.
Arnebia cornuta.—This is a charming novelty, an annual, native of Afghanistan. The little seedling with lancet-like hairy, dark green leaves, becomes presently a widely branching plant two feet in diameter and one and one-half feet high. Each branch and branchlet is terminated by a lengthening raceme of flowers. These are in form somewhat like those of an autumnal Phlox, of a beautiful deep golden yellow color, adorned and brightened up by five velvety black blotches. These blotches soon become coffee brown and lose more and more their color, until after three days they have entirely disappeared. During several months the plant is very showy, the fading flowers being constantly replaced by fresh expanding ones. Sown in April in the open border, it needs no care but to be thinned out and kept free from weeds. It must, however, have some soil which does not contain fresh manure.
Delphinium Zalil.—This, also, is a native of Afghanistan, but its character, whether a biennial or perennial, is not yet ascertained. The Afghans call it Zalil and the plant or root is used for dyeing purposes. Some years ago we only knew blue, white and purple larkspurs, and then California added two species with scarlet flowers. The above is of a beautiful sulphur yellow, and, all in all, it is a plant of remarkable beauty. From a rosette of much and deeply divided leaves, rises a branched flower stem to about two feet; each branch and branchlet ending in a beautiful spike of flowers each of about an inch across and the whole spike showing all its flowers open at once. It is likely to become a first rate standard plant of our gardens. To have it in flower the very first year it must be sown very early, say in January, in seed pans, and transplanted later, when it will flower from the end of May until the end of July. Moreover, it can be sown during spring and summer in the open air to flower the following year. It is quite hardy here.
Max Leichtlin.
Baden-Baden.
Iris tenuis.*
Fig. 3.—Iris tenuis.
T HIS pretty delicate species of Iris, Fig. 3, is a native of the Cascade Mountains of Northern Oregon. Its long branching rootstocks are scarcely more than a line in thickness, sending up sterile leafy shoots and slender stems about a foot high. The leaves are thin and pale green, rather taller than the stems, sword-shaped and half an inch broad or more. The leaves of the stem are bract-like and distant, the upper one or two subtending slender peduncles. The spathes are short, very thin and scarious, and enclose the bases of their rather small solitary flowers, which are “white, lightly striped and blotched with yellow and purple.” The sepals and petals are oblong-spatulate, from a short tube, the sepals spreading, the shorter petals erect and notched.
The peculiar habitat of this species doubtless accounts in good measure for its slender habit and mode of growth. Mr. L. F. Henderson, of Portland, Oregon, who discovered it in 1881, near a branch of the Clackamas River called Eagle Creek, about thirty miles from Portland, reports it as growing in the fir forests in broad mats, its very long rootstocks running along near the surface of the ground, just covered by moss or partly decayed fir-needles, with a light addition of soil. This also would indicate the need of special care and treatment in its cultivation. In May, 1884, Mr. Henderson took great pains to procure roots for the Botanic Garden at Cambridge, which were received in good order, but which did not survive the next winter. If taken up, however, later in the season or very early in the spring, it is probable that with due attention to soil and shade there would be little trouble in cultivating it successfully. The accompanying figure is from a drawing by Mr. C. E. Faxon.
Sereno Watson.
* TENUIS. Watson, Proc. Amer. Acad., xvii, 380. Rootstock elongated, very slender (a line thick); leaves thin, ensiform, about equaling the stems, four to eight lines broad; stems scarcely a foot high, 2 or 3-flowered, with two or three bract-like leaves two or three inches long; lateral peduncles very slender, as long as the bracts; spathes scarious, an inch long; pedicels solitary, very short; flowers small, white marked with yellow and purple; tube two or three lines long; segments oblong-spatulate, the sepals spreading, one and one-half inches long, the petals shorter and emarginate; anthers as long as the filaments; styles with narrow entire crests; capsule oblong-ovate, obtuse, nine lines long.]