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I thought they had stopped blooming weeks ago." The Doctor took it in his hand and examined it minutely: "It is the Rosa Blanda," he said, "five cleft sepals that terminate in a tube. Pliny tells us that in ancient days the warriors used the petals of this rose to garnish their choicest meats. Who is that quaint person coming over the stile?" "It's Miss Ferney. What a nuisance, on our last day!
In apt illustration of Sprengel's theory of the "path-finder" or honey-guide, the insect does not alight at the centre of the flower, but upon one of the three large drooping sepals, whose veins, converging to the narrow trough above, indicate the path to the nectar.
Some of our clumps had from a dozen to twenty flowers open at the same time, and the general effect in the early morning sunshine is a very pretty one. We have another species similar in habit which is just now a mass of rosy buds, and if you blow open its sepals, they are of a bright magenta color inside, but I never yet saw a flower open naturally on this plant.
Tho he meant to be just, he seemed haunted by a certain chronic assumption that the science of the day pretended completeness, and he had just found out that the savants had neglected to discriminate a particular botanical variety, had failed to describe the seeds or count the sepals. "That is to say," we replied, "the blockheads were not born in Concord; but who said they were?
Any intermediate form would have at once betrayed itself by larger colored petals, coming out of the calyx-sheath. The cruciate petals are small and linear and greenish, recalling thereby the color of the sepals. Mr.
Flowers on the sides of the stems, rather low down, long-tubed; large, showy; tube 6 in. long, smooth, fleshy, with a few scales near the top, and a whorl of greenish, strap-shaped, pointed sepals, the petals spreading, with toothed margins and a long acute point, white or cream-coloured; anthers yellow. A native of various parts of South America and the West Indies, but always close to the sea.
P. caerulea Constance Elliott has greenish-white flowers; and P. caerulea Colvillei has white sepals and a blue fringe. The latter is of more robust growth, and more floriferous than the species. PAULOWNIA IMPERIALIS. Japan, 1840. This is a handsome, fast-growing tree, and one that is particularly valuable for its ample foliage, and distinct and showy flowers.
Epid. prismatocarpum, also, is a lovely thing, with narrow dagger-like sepals and petals, creamy-yellow, spotted black, lip mauve or violet, edged with pale yellow. Of the many hot Dendrobiums, Australia supplies a good proportion. There is D. bigibbum, of course, too well known for description; it dwells on the small islands in Torres Straits.
Just as the sepals open at the tips, and you think they are about to expand, they shrivel and fall away, leaving a tuft of greenish yellow stamens in the center. Is it A. Hudsoni? Another species not often seen, but well worth culture, is A. coerulea, a kind with finely cut leaves and purplish blue flowers.
The ground color is yellowish, blotched with lurid brownish crimson, the long pendent tails being blood color, and the interior of the sepals are almost shaggy. The spectral appearance of the flower is considerably heightened by the smooth, white, slipper-like lip, which contrasts so forcibly in color and texture with the lurid shagginess around it.
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