246 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



apart, and they color apparently just as well as those on these other trees, 

 but the foliage on the other was eight to ten inches long. 



The President; That is a good place to get some peaches by and by; 

 that orchard is all right if it will do that. 



SOME FLORISTS' PROBLEMS. 



BY THOMAS GUNSON, MICHIGAN AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE. 



The business of growing flowers in glass houses, for commercial pur- 

 poses, as at present understood, is purely an American invention. There 

 is scarcely a single idea in all the annals of horticulture that bear directly 

 on the work of today. Everything is new. We may imitate each other, 

 but all the recent ideas belong to this generation. 



A business so young, so advanced, and so largely dependent on the 

 esthetic taste of the people has reached its present conditions in a very 

 peculiar way. Its development belongs to no particular class, but men 

 and women of all nationalities have vied with each other in giving their 

 best thought and care in bringing it up to what are known as ordinary 

 methods. 



The problems of the florist are many and varied, and though he may 

 try to avoid the snares and pitfalls of experience, new difficulties beset 

 him almost every day. It may be what seems now a universal problem 

 with everj^ product of the soil, overproduction at one time and scarcity at 

 another; it may be that some one has found a better way to produce or 

 preserve; or that some one may have studied fickle fashion more closely, 

 and got hold of some color better suiting her unstable taste; or it may be 

 that the girl in the store is not up to date; lack of attention in the green- 

 houses, any one of which is enough to turn the business one way or 

 the other. The florist has, like all others, suffered from the long and 

 severe depression, and yet he has suffered less, perhaps, than those 

 engaged in more necessary labor. The product of his labor is a luxury', 

 and people have been struggling to get the necessities. 



That our friends the fruitgrowers may better understand the diffi- 

 culties that beset the commercial florist, it may be necessarj^ for me to 

 enumerate the principal crops that constitute what are known as florists' 

 flowers. These consist principally of roses, carnations, chrysanthemums, 

 and others of more or less importance. So different are they in tempera- 

 ment that when grown together for any length of time they gradually 

 dwindle and die. Each requires a specialist ready to cater to its whims, 

 and if their wants are not granted there are from one to half a dozen 

 diseases ready to carry them off at any time. 



With the fruitgrower it is different. Nearly all the principal fruits 

 belong to the same order, and though they may belong to difl'erent genera 

 there is a distinct relationship between them. All are natives of the same 

 temperate zone, and have by long cultivation became so thoroughly 



