2l8 



POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



Others are scarcely thicker than the stem which hears them, while 

 others are absolutely and completely absent. This hybrid poppy is 

 tall and generally branches like the opium poppy. It is perennial, 



although its pistillate or seed an- 

 cestor is a short-lived annual. 

 This red poppy can even be di- 

 vided at the root and multiplied 

 like the perennial oriental poppy. 

 These hybrids have generally a 

 dark mark at the base of the scar- 

 let petals as in the oriental poppy ; 

 in some the leaves are smoothish 

 and glaucous, as in the opium 

 poppy; in most, deep green and 

 hairy, more as in the other. 

 Many flowers have their stems 

 coalescent with that of the neigh- 

 boring flower. 



" These second generation hy- 

 brid poppy plants unexpectedly 

 all proved to be perennials, and 



Sample of Hybrid Poppies. 



are now making a tremendous 

 growth; the clusters of foliage of 

 some of them are fourteen to eight- 

 een inches across already. Among 

 this second generation hybrid lot of 

 poppies each single plant seems to 

 be different from every other plant 

 in the lot and strange to say the 

 leaves now resemble not only poppy 

 leaves, but celandine, various this- 

 tles, primroses, turnips, mustards 

 and numerous other plants are very 

 closely imitated, showing most as- 

 tounding variations." 



The striped amaiwllis, vittata, 

 hybridized with a Mexican species, 

 formosissima, has narrow twisted 

 petals of a very deep scarlet and 

 nearly plain. The leaves are much 

 narrower than in the vittata, the 

 stalks more slender, and the plants 

 more profuse bloomers. 



Hybridizing crinum with amaryllis develops a plant with a fine 



Sample Leaves of Two Species of Boc- 

 conia, showing One of Thousands of 

 Cases of Great Variation in Foliage 

 in Closely Related Species. 



