88 STATE HORTICULTURA.L SOCIETY. 



attempt no classificatioa whatever; there are those who attempt a lit- 

 tle, and there are those who attempt vastly too much. The gardener, 

 the florist and the great public reject them all. They are cumbered 

 with too many terms ; they vary too much ; life is too short to fool 

 with them, and the botanist kuows it. Then what is to be done to 

 give a comprehensive idea of the vast amount of material available in 

 nurseries, but seldom called for? It is now selected, often in a hurry, 

 often for its cheapness, always for its supposed adaptability ; but the 

 mind is always embarrassed by the multitude of material presented 

 in a perfect maze of straight-rowed miscellany. 



There is not a garden in the country — and but few in the world — 

 where analogous plants can be compared without a great deal of phy- 

 sical waste and loss of time. Botanists, scientists as they undoubedly 

 are, have chiefly confined themselves to arranging sheets of paper with 

 portions of plants glued upon them. Herbarium sheets are conve- 

 nient, but perfect flowering plants are object-lessons infinitely superior. 

 If they could be arranged with as much convenience and sequence as 

 the herbarium, would they not facilitate exact knowledge ? Given a 

 garden, it is easy, and as a matter of fact, some of the greatest nurse- 

 ries unconsciously come near to classifying the larger series, such as 

 conifers and bulbs and grasses. 



Let us suppose a nursery : 



{'a J Are mostly all plants with two seed-lobes, and they build up 

 their annual wood outside. They can easily be determined. 



fbj Are all or nearly all plants with a single seed-lobe, and their 

 stems are vessels vertically arranged. 



fcj Are plants without true seeds or seed-lobes ; they are ferns 

 and their allies and equisetums- 



All the trees and shrubs and most of the herbaceous plants belong 

 to section fa.J. Botanists divide it into four parts : 



fa) 1. Are plants with many petals — magnolia, geranium and 

 roses. 



2. Are plants with their petals joined into one, forming a cup or 

 tube — honey-suckle, heather, gentian. 



3. Are plants without conspicuous petaloid organs — altenanthera, 

 polygonium, willow, oak. 



4. Are trees or shrubs with what botanists term naked seeds, 

 but what gardeners know as conifers — larch, bald-cypress, ginko or 

 salisburia, etc. 



These four sections exactly represent the modern botanical division 

 of these important plants, and no nurseryman need be told how it 

 would help him to grow them together, for the purposes of reference 



