25 JANUARY 1935, Page 16

Earliest Flowers The Royal Horticultural Society has opened its new

year with shows of quite singular charm. No flowers perhaps give such thoroughgoing pleasure as the first flowers ; and though doubtless most of the exhibits at the first fortnightly show of the year came from under glass and included orchids and rhododendrons, the season has helped, even indoors. Most of us perhaps cultivate too little variety in early flowering plants. Camellias were out this year in January.. Indoors Cyclamens have been wonderful, as if they felt the outdoor warmth, and this suggests the fact that one of the flowers about which most questions were asked by the less expert visitors to the Horticultural Hall at Westminster was the well-named daffodil, Narcissus cyclamineus, said to be much the earliest of all. The garden cult grows con- tinuously. There has been a rapid increase in the member- ship of the Alpine Garden Society, who have recruited from all round the Empire, and the R.H.S. grows continuously better and bigger.