216 Agricultural Experiment Station, Ithaca, N. Y. 



is, their symmetry is not marred if some plants are pulled out and 

 others are put in. And if the weeds now and then get a start, very 

 little harm is done. Such a border half full of weeds is handsomer 

 than the average well kept geranium bed, because the weeds enjoy 

 growing and the geraniums do not. I hav^e such a border, three 

 feet wide and ninety feet long beside a rear walk. I am putting 

 plants into it every month in the year when the frost is out of the 

 ground. Plants are du^ in the woods or iields, whenever I find 

 one which I fancy, even if in July. The tops are cut off, the roots kept 

 moist, and even though the soil is a most unkindly one, most of 

 these much abused plants grow. Such a border has something new 

 and interesting every month of the growing season ; and even in the 

 winter the tall clumps of grasses and aster-stems wave their plumes 

 above the snow and are a source of delight to every frolicksome 

 bevy of snowbirds. 



The China asters are amongst the best of all the annual garden 

 flowers. They are of the easiest culture, most free of bloom, and 

 comprise a multitude of forms and colors. They are, therefore, 

 admirably adapted to profuse and generous effects in schemes of 

 planting. They are also worthy of wide attention because they are 

 adapted to many of the purposes for which chrysanthemums are 

 grown, and they can be raised to perfection wholly without the use 

 of glass. They attain^their best in the decline of the season, from 

 late August till frost, at a time when many of the annuals and the 

 greater part of the perennials are spent and gone. No garden flowers 

 carry such a profusion of bloom and color down to the very closing 

 in of winter. Last fall our aster border still had blooms when the 

 snows fell in November, and when even the wild goldenrods had 

 waned and died. 



The evolution of the China aster suggests that of the chrysan- 

 themum at almost every point, and it is, therefore, a history of 

 remarkable variations. The plant is a native to China. It was 

 introduced into Europe about 1731 by K. P. d'Incarville, a Jesuit 

 missionary in China, for whom the genus InvarviUca of the Big- 

 nonia family was named. At that time it was a single flower ; that 

 is, the rays or ligulate florets were of only two to four rows. These 

 rays were blue, voilet or white. The center of the flower (or head) 

 was comprised of very numerous tubular yellowish florets. Philip 

 Miller, the famous gardener botanist of Chelsea, England, received 

 seeds of the single white and red asters in 1731, evidently from. 



