One of the loveliest of all Orchids now in bloom is the deep rosy-flowered Vanda teres - a beautiful thing truly, but with a reputation of being shy in producing its flower-spikes. A Continental authority some time ago suggested slitting the leaf-sheath at the nodes in order to induce flowering. That may be one way, but not the best. Cutting a knot is all very well sometimes, but there are cases in which it is best to untie it. The case of this Vanda is that of the majority of Orchids; if it be well grown, and kept on the dry side of moistness at the root, I find it easy enough to flower. Don't try to make a short bushy plant of it. A good strong stem 7 feet high, trained up the roof of our Orchid-house, is now producing two spikes, one above and the other below last year's flowering node. Some Orchids seem to require length of stem ere they bloom well and regularly year after year. The Renanthera is a case in point; and Vanda teres would be found to bloom far more satisfactorily if length of stem was sought after instead of a bushy habit of growth.

One of the rarest of all wind-flowers, and one of the most beautiful also - viz., Anemone sulphurea - has just opened its flowers, and has been much admired. It has delicate sulphur-yellow flowers, and finely cut hairy leaves, and is one of the most distinct and striking of all the species. A. fulgens is a blazing beauty for a rather dry and sunny border - its gorgeous scarlet black-eyed flowers lighting up with glowing colour the whole place where it grows. Less conspicuous, but scarcely less beautiful, is the purple form of the last named, the buds of which are so rich as to seem lined with purple velvet : all these should be grown by all lovers of rare and lovely hardy flowers.

Of good hardy climbing shrubs for blooming in May, there are many more costly and far inferior to Clematis montana. Well planted at the foot of a dead tree of low bushy habit, and allowed to take possession of the branches, it with a little timely assistance will become a thing of beauty not readily surpassed. Its white flowers are produced in wreaths and festoons in the most lovely way. There is a more beautiful Clematis for May blooming, but it is not so easily obtained, or so easily satisfied with soil or climate, as C. montana, - I allude to Clematis alpina (Atragene austriaca caerulea), which is now (May 12) a mass of fresh green leafage, studded with hundreds of delicate lilac-blue, four-sepalled bells, each having a soft white boss of stamens in the centre, which lends a delicate charm to the whole flower.

Of all Primroses, the dainty, wee, purple-flowered Bird's-eye Primrose of the Orkney meadows, P. scotica, is to my mind just now most charming. It is easily raised from seeds sown as soon as ripe every summer, and a full-sized specimen looks quite at home in a tiny thumb-pot, which should be plunged in sand or ashes to the rim, in order to prevent extremes of drought. Its broad leaves are farinose below, and barely an inch in length; the flower - scape rises 2 or 3 inches in height, each crowned by four or five purple flowers, with a conspicuous iris-like ring around the eye or tube, - hence the popular name of Bird's-eye Primrose.

Amongst our grandmothers' favourite garden-flowers, few are more distinct or beautiful than the Virginian Lungwort, just now bearing its nodding clusters of delicate sky-blue bells, in a shady corner of a moist peat-bed. In the open border its beauty fades rapidly and its roots soon decay; but in a suitable position like that above indicated, few plants give more satisfaction than Pulmonaria (Mertensia) virginica.

Anent that gorgeous scarlet Pau Anemone fulgens, I have just been lucky enough to meet with a gentleman who paid some olive-skinned peasants well to dig roots of it by the sackful from among the friable red earth of their vine-fields. Both parties to the bargain were delighted - the peasants with their silver coins, and my friend with his bags of dry withered-looking roots. It is curious that any kind of Anemone once introduced should become scarce in our gardens, since their roots are capable of growing after the most minute subdivision; and my friend tells me that although the hot southern sun does much by ripening the roots in summer and autumn, yet he believes that the cultivation they receive unwittingly from the peasants, when scratching amongst their vines, does much also, by breaking and so propagating and distributing them into fresh soils; hence those gorgeous sheets of colour which are the delight of all travellers in the sunny south early in the year.

Of all popular names given to plants popular or unpopular, I think one of the most ghastly is that of the "Bleeding Nun," as applied to the Canadian Blood-root (Sanguinaria canadensis). In its original French form it is a trifle less repulsive, but, any way, it is not pretty, or agreeably suggestive, as all good and right plant names should and must ever be.

Some of the old Daffodils - "one flower on a stalk," as Parkinson describes them - are beautiful enough, but we have now new races of seedling kinds which bear several flowers on a stalk, - so that we have now, in fact, "Polyanthus Daffodils," as we have long had Polyanthus Narcissi, and so much more variety is thereby added to our gardens. Some seedlings raised by De Graaff Brothers, of Leyden, from seeds of N. bicolor, are very fine and bold, bearing two flowers on a stalk, and having a very rich and agreeable perfume.

Of all the many points connected with the now important question of hardy flowers, the first and most urgent is their nomenclature. The more you know of hardy flowers, the more inextricably confusing do their names become. Old Parkinson, when writing of Narcissus 250 years ago, lamented this question of incorrect names. "There hath" (said he) "been great confusion among many of our modern writers of plantes in not distinguishing the manifold varieties, . . . for every one almost, without consideration of kinde or forme, or other speciall note, giveth names to diversify one from another, that if one shall receive from severall places the catalogues of their names (as I have many) as they set them down, and compare the one catalogue with the other, he shall scarce have three names in a dozen to agree togeather, - one calling that by one name which another calleth by another, that very few can tell what they meane".

As John Parkinson was two centuries and a half ago, so are all growers of hardy flowers to-day: one can never be sure of what is intended by the names in most catalogues, and the result is dire confusion, loss of money, labour, energy, and sometimes temper also. The way out of the difficulty is not short, nor easy, nor inexpensive. "We must look to the more intelligent of cultivators, and induce them to work out reliable monographs of their special favourites, just as Mr Elwes did the Lilies, and as Mr Maw of Brosely is now doing the Crocus. Here is honourable labour awaiting those cultivators who have leisure and means.

These same hardy flowers have had an exceptionally bad winter and spring to contend with this season. Drought and frost and east winds ruined the spring blossoms in all exposed places. Of all the sufferers through climate, however, the mortality is greatest among half-hardy shrubs, which are pretty generally cut down to the ground-level, and not seldom killed outright. If we are to have winters of like severity, Briar stocks for Roses are doomed to a certainty, and own-root Roses will be in great demand.

Cattleya citrina is not a showy Orchid, but a great favourite with ladies on account of its delicious fruity, citron-like odour. It is like Lilium auratum, in having been imported by the thousand - and like it, also, in blooming well for a year or two, and then dying out altogether. A gentleman wrote the other day to ask me how he should grow it in order to keep it permanently, and that is a question many Orchid-growers would like to have thoroughly answered. Its period of growth is during our winter months, and I find that it grows quite freely in a temperature only a few degrees above freezing-point. A plant grown in a house from which frost was barely excluded last winter, made growths twice the size of those made in a Cattleya-house (never below 50°) the year before, and is now producing two flowers to a growth. Of course it must be suspended head downwards, or it does not thrive satisfactorily, and it enjoys all the light and sun our cold clime affords during winter. Just when the flower-buds are half grown, it should have a higher temperature until they expand, when it may again be returned to a cool house.

A very little peat, surfaced with sphagnum moss, on a teak-wood raft, is the best compost.

One of the sweetest and best of white flowers for cutting during the latter end of May or beginning of June, is undoubtedly the double-flowered form of the poet's Narcissus. Once well established in good deep soil, its flowers never fail. By many they are liked even better than Gardenia flowers, to which they bear some resemblance, and they endure for many days in water after being cut.

One of the most lovely of thoroughly hardy spring flowers is Anemone apennina, which, during April, is most floriferous in all soils and situations. Under trees, or on grassy banks, it is equally at home. If you take a spade and think you have dug up every bit of it, up it comes next year in a bigger patch than ever. It rivals Couch-grass in its capacity for increase under spade cultivation. If it once gets loose in a rich wood, it runs about like a child at play. It is by some called the "Blue Marguerite," a somewhat pretty name for it. Years ago it grew splendidly in a verger's garden, under the shadow of Peterborough Cathedral, seemingly as much at home there as if on its native Apennines. F. W. B.