406 MISSOURI STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



" I will be greatly obliged if you will give me the desired infor- 

 mation " 



To answer our correspondent's questions clearly, we shall have 

 to go over some scattered ground. It will require close attention ; 

 but the reader will be repaid by a full knowledge of the whole subject. 



First, we must remember that plants do not flower at all until 

 there has been some check to the vegetative force. If the tree grows 

 very vigorously, we have to root prune it, or in some other way injure 

 or check the growing force. We put this in another form of express- 

 ion, and we say — the intensity of the reproductive or seed-bearing 

 force is inversely with the plant's hold on life. 



Secondly, we may remember that a flower is made up of metamor- 

 phosed leaves. The calyx is an organ, but little removed from a leaf; 

 the corolla is formed from leaves still further advanced. Stamens are 

 leaves, and pistils the organs more particularly related to reproduc- 

 tion, are leaves quite distinctly removed. 



Thirdly, a double flower is one that has not advanced towards the 

 reproductive stage further than to form petals, with perhaps a few sta- 

 mens, and makes no seed. 



We see from all, that a double flower is the product of a plant, or 

 a portion of a plant, that has had* its vegetative powers but slightly 

 checked. This has been actually tested by experiment, by the present 

 writer, and an account formed one of his earliest scientific papers, now 

 getting on to near a half century ago. A large number of plants of 

 the six-week stocks were taken, and a few seed-vessels from the first 

 flowers, when the plant had barely passed its vegetative state were 

 taken ; and separately were taken seed from the last flowers on the 

 secondary branches, and when the plant was about to die. The result 

 was the production of nearly all double flowers in the first lot, and 

 single flowers in the second. 



We now sum up all in the following conclusion : High vegetative 

 vigor is unfavorable to the production of single flowers. 



Carrying this to the direct question of our correspondent, it will 

 not matter so much whether plants are pot grown or not, except in so 

 far as this may aid or assist vegetative vigor. In some parts of the 

 world first-class pot-culture would aid vegetative vigor, and then a 

 good portion of double flowers would certainly result. And it is no 

 doubt from this experience that florists have learned to look on pot- 

 culture as the necessary means to a good strain of double flowers. 

 Plants left to outdoor chances, would be much more likely to have 

 vegetative vigor impaired, and produce strains of single flowers. 



But anyone can see that it is possible to teed well, and get a plant 



