248 NEBRASKT STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 



Removal of Seed Promotes Blooms. 



Keep the seeds picked from your plants if you would have a long 

 season of bloom. Nature is striving to produce seed, and when that 

 is accomplished the work of the plant is done and it rests from Us 

 labor. You are growing it for bloom, nature is growing it for seed, 

 and nature is very persistent, probably more persistent than you will 

 be. The first thing you know she has scored and your plants are full 

 of seed pods and no bloom and no amount of coaxing will have much 

 effect after that.^ — From Kansas Farmer. 



THE IRIS. 



C. S. Harrison. 



This is a large family with 170 native varieties and these have been 

 crossed and imoroved until the collection, taken together, is the most 

 beautiful of any of the flower family. They have been overlooked 

 but they are the coming flower. 



Why? 



1st. Their fascinating and alluring lovelfness. They are named 

 from tho Goddess Iris, the rainbow personified, who combined the 

 beauty of heaven and earth in their matchless robes. It would seem 

 as if she gathered the glory of the sunset, the beauty of the sun 

 mantles, the tinting and coloring and the shading which plays on 

 mountain and plain and wove them all in those opaline and irridescent 

 robes with which she has adorned her children. The marvelous vein- 

 ing and tracery, and the delicate intermingling of colors give them a 

 charm no other flower possesses. Many of them have a delicious fra- 

 grance. Some have a charming reflex like the richest silks which 

 gives them a resistless fascination. In fact when you take a mass of 

 them of a hundred kinds and see them all on dress parade, each vieing 

 with the other to see which can put on the most radiant appearance 

 they seem almost Tluman in their efforts to dazzle and attract. But 

 they have this advantage; no gathering of royalty, no efforts of the 

 select four hundred, none of the elaborate trousseaus of Paris can 

 compare with -the skill and high art of the great florist as He has 

 adorned the brilliant host to charm the eye and feed the soul. All the 

 rays and tints and colors of the rainbow are here — the concentrated 

 beauty of cloud and earth united and blended yi a harmonious whole. 



2nd. They are the best drouth resisters we have. Last season 

 was very hot and dry. Often the burning sirocco winds were blowing 

 fiercely with the mercury soaring above a hundred, only 2 inches of 

 rain from the first of May until the first of October, and yet we did 

 not lose a plant in 150,000. In digging them in September, the ground 

 was as dry as an ash heap, but the roots seemed to have gathered and 

 stored the moisture. They were plump and full of life and when 

 replanted, grew with great vigor. Beside them, the hardy peony 

 drooped, and many of the perennials succumbed entirely. This trait 



