i894. HORTICULTURAL ^'SPORTS." 267 



have an opportunity of marketing their wastrels, at the expense, of 

 course, of their choicest. Then the Juarez or Cactus type turns up 

 from Mexico, and becomes the rage, and in a season or two we find it 

 evolved in all tints, and largely from the old forms, many being 

 christened Cactus, which, in the breeder's opinion, had simply " gone 

 wrong," and, but for the fashion, would have decorated the dust- 

 heap. 



So far, we have touched mainly on the minor " sports," which 

 need to be accumulated to be striking ; but in many cases, as in that 

 of the nectarines, among the fruits we owe some of our best flowers to 

 wide and sudden departures from previous types. The beautiful double 

 crimson hawthorn, for instance, appeared as a bud-sport on a pink one, 

 a branch resulting which was entirely covered with dark crimson flowers. 

 INIany of our best roses we owe to bud-sports. The white moss-rose 

 came as a sucker on the red, and, when severed for propagation, the 

 striped moss-rose sprang from a bud near the cut. One variety of 

 chrysanthemum yielded, in the same way, no less than six distinct 

 forms. Generally, varieties originating in this manner remain constant 

 when propagated by cuttings, but are very liable to revert when re- 

 produced by seed. Variegated forms innumerable have originated as 

 bud-sports on normal green plants, and these, when cut off and propa- 

 gated by buds, retain their peculiarities. The writer recently saw a 

 plumose form of Polysticlmm angulave of which six fronds out of seven 

 were profusely splashed with pure white, yet the plant was several 

 years old, and neither it nor its parent, of which it was an .offset, ever 

 showed the slightest tendency to variegation before. This case is very 

 peculiar, so much of the plant being suddenly affected, and to such an 

 extreme extent. Seeds of variegated sports of this class generally 

 produce normal green and wholly white plants, the latter of which 

 are very short-lived, owing to the absence of chlorophyll. In very 

 rare cases, a graft has been known to affect the stock, and form a 

 graft-hybrid. Cytisus Adami, a hybrid laburnum, is, perhaps, a unique 

 oddity in this way, being a quasi combination of a purple and a yellow 

 laburnum. The leaves of each species differ materially, as does the 

 general habit of growth, and in specimens of this, which may be 

 seen at Kew, the tree is constantly sending out branches and twigs of 

 each distinct species side by side, and mixed up in the most curious 

 fashion ; the foliage and habits peculiar to each accompanying the 

 characteristic bunches of yellow or purple flowers. 



The well-known Cockscomb, a densely fasciated form of Celosia, 

 is ordinarily a rich crimson, but at a recent show of the Royal Horti- 

 cultural Society, one grower who had made a hobby of this for years 

 exhibited fifteen distinct colours of it, including a yellow, and every 

 plant was furthermore crimped and crested in a fashion of its own. 

 Patience is indeed a virtue to the selective cultivator. Tulips, to wit, 

 frequently remain for many years in their " unbroken " stage. The 

 seedlings of this family, when they first bloom, present very different 



