EXPERIMENTS WITH THE NODDING ALLIUM. 



By Willard N. Clute. 



ONE can never tell, until he tries, what can be made out of 

 some wild plant that may strike his fancy. In a few 

 cases the best of treatment in the garden only inclines a speci- 

 men to grow more vigorously, but in others the flowers may 

 become larger, more abundant and even produce other colors 

 than those usually found afield. Frequently, too, single 

 flowers show a tendency to double when given good cultivation. 



One of these wildings with which the writer has recently 

 been experimenting, is the nodding allium (Allium cerniium). 

 As it grows in its native haunts it is sufficiently decorative to 

 deserve a place in the flower garden but under cultivation it 

 takes on additional beauty as our frontispiece, from a photo- 

 graph, clearly shows. 



In color the flowers range from a rather deep pink to 

 nearly white and some experiments have been carried on to 

 discover, if it is possible to breed up a pure race of pink 

 flowered plants and another of white flowered ones. At the 

 beginning, the fields were searched for specimens approaching 

 nearest our ideal and these were removed to the garden to serve 

 as the stock from which to breed. Seeds of the individuals 

 showing the deepest color and others from the paler specimens 

 were planted separately and when the young plants were large 

 enough they were transplanted to the nursery rows. The work 

 of transplanting any species of allium is easy : the tops may die 

 but there is enough nourishment stored in the tiny bulb to tide 

 the plant over the period of getting established. 



It seems to require two years from seed before the plants 

 of this species become large enough to bloom. In the second 

 summer, then, the plants from the first experiment began to 

 bloom and in this there were several surprises, for both sets 

 of seeds had produced plants showing the two colors pink and 



