May 24—We noticed that the groups of calceolaria plants at the Flower Show were attracting a lot of attention "today: this plant derives its name from the latin calceolus, a slipper. The bag-like flowers have the appearance of slippers; but as the cypripedium (a member of the orchid family) is known as "lady's slipper," we refer to the calceolaria as "lady's purse." There are numerous species most of which are native to South America: there are however, two to be found in New Zealand. We saw an effective member of the Lily family in one of the collections of perenniels and identified it as Ornithogalum arabicum, a native of the Mediterranean regions. The huge black pistil set in the centre of five white petals makes the flower most attractive and interesting. We admired a collection of sweet peas which we saw on exhibition; they had those long and strong stems which we read about. The exhibitor must have encouraged early root action this year by planting his seedlings in a favourable location last Autumn. We also admired some gorgeous bearded irises. We were rather disappointed to find them in the artistic arrangement section of the show: we would have liked to have seen them in the iris classes, where we should have been able to have inspected them better. We feel that many visitors did not notice how really beautiful they were and few flowers can be more beautiful than some of the bearded irises. We admired the efforts of the juniors at the show, some of the exhibits were most artistic: we saw a proud little chappie of four, strutting around his exhibit like a peacock, he was probably wondering what to buy with the money he had won. There were some fine pansies on display also, what a long season these plants
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.