34 THE AMERICAN BOTANIST 



his talk before the Horticultural Club of Boston, last week, W. 

 A. Manda urged that the propogation of hardy garden herba- 

 ceous plants by seed should be more generally followed by 

 growers in this country in preference to the more common 

 method of root division. The result, Mr. Manda believed, 

 would be in time a substantial increase in new forms and a gen- 

 eral advancement in quality over the long cultivated types. 

 Once a 'break' is started the progress of evolution would be 

 startling. Many of our native plants, for example, still exist 

 only in their primitive form although even in that stage they 

 seem to suggest more promising possibilities than are apparent 

 in the original wild chrysanthemum of China and Japan from 

 which our highly cultivated varieties have been evolved. One 

 need not think long nor deeply to conjure up wondrous things 

 in imagination. There are plenty of subjects within the reach 

 oi any budding Lemoine well equipped with the required zeal, 

 judgment, patience and — humility." 



Magenta Flowers in the Garden. — An excess to 

 which we are often impelled by this same innocent love of 

 color, is the use of too many plants that have the strongest 

 colors. One of the commonest complaints that ladies make is 

 that "magenta flowers will not harmonize with anything in the 

 house or outdoors, and we can't wear them." Gardening writ- 

 ers often express the utmost animosity against magenta, as if 

 it were a bad color in itself. Is any color inherently bad, or is 

 it largely a question of combination? Most of all the color 

 discords in gardens are caused by the near-magenta colors, 

 such as purple, crimson and crimson-pink. So notorious are 

 these "troublesome colors" that careful gardeners have a rule 

 not to buy a phlox, peony, iris, or chrysanthemum from a cata- 

 logue even when they are advertised as being delicate colors, 

 like pink and lavender. Sad experience teaches that it is safer 

 to select such varieties when they are in flower. If there is 

 some plant of this color group which you love very much, can 



