348 Bulletin 147. 



shade, from rosy bronze to pure yellow. Yellows will show red and 

 bronzes will lose it, but the changes are probably not so serious in 

 dollars and cents as the loss of color in the bright pink varieties. 



IV. CROWN AND TERMINAL BUDS.* 



The choice of buds in chrysanthemums presents some phenomena 

 that are extremely interesting and absolutely unique in the cultivation 

 of plants. At the outset it should be said that the whole subject may 

 be safely ignored only by amateurs who do not grow flowers for the 

 shows. Every competitor at the shows, and every florist who tries for 

 the earhest flowers on the market should master the subject. While 

 the terminal bud is the best for general purposes in America, the crown 

 bud usually gives the earliest flower, but there are exceptions to both 

 rules. The whole problem is a curious one. One kind of bud will 

 sometimes give an incurved flower and another a reflexed flower, and 

 other great changes in form may occur not often only in the same 

 variety, but actually on the same plant. Terminal buds give pink 

 flowers, while crown buds may give flowers that are pure white or 

 nearly so. Form and color may be so completely changed as to make 

 the variety entirely unrecognizable; foliage is often seriously affected, 

 and, in short, the bud factor alone may make all the difference between 

 success and failure in competitive exhibition. 



A proper perspective of this subject may be gotten only by reflect- 

 ing on the importance of disbudding in the amelioration of plants. 

 The Chinese and Japanese seem to have practiced the disbudding of 

 chrysanthemums from an antiquity that is scarcely credible to the 

 western mind. Their achievements are just as wonderful as if we had 

 produced the same forms and colors from our own much hated weed, 

 the ox-eye daisy {^Chrysanthemum Leucafithemum), by disbudding and 

 by patient care through the centuries. In 1845, chrysanthemums had 

 barely emerged into some degree of general notice in England, and 

 the oldest extant horticultural journal of the country was in its fifth 

 year. Yet in the Gardeners' Ch?'07iicle of 1845, a chrysanthemum 

 culturist mentions disbudding as an essential. For the last twenty- 



*This account is slightly extended from an article in the Florists^ Ex- 

 change for March 26, 1898. 



