THE FLORAL WORLD AND GARDEN GDTDE. 



55 



It is advisable to raise German Flower Seeds in pans or boxes, under the protection of 

 glass, as recommended for half-hardy Annuals ; but where this cannot be conveniently 

 done, they may be sown on a well-prepared border, in April or May. German seed- 

 growers bestow great attention upon Stocks, and with good management at least two- 

 thirds of the plants will produce double flowers. The most successful method of cultiva- 

 ting these beautiful plants, is to sow the seed in March and April, on heat, and when they 

 have four leaves, carefully prick them out into a bed of poor soil, and finally transplant 

 them when three or four inches high, with a ball of earth, to a bed or border of rich roil. 

 They may also be sown out of doors in April and May, on a nicely prepared border ; but 

 the seedlings must be treated as already recommended. — Seed Catalogue, 1858. 



GENISTA CANAEIENSIS. 



1 don't wonder the market-growers find 

 Genistas pay them well, for to see them just 

 now in Covent Garden market, is to have a 

 strange sense of water in the mouth that no 

 flowerless Londoner can resist. In fact, 

 they sell as well as any sort of stock brought 

 into market — a quantity put together in a 

 mass having a very dazzling effect. Now, 

 isn't it strange that amateurs seldom at- 

 tempt to make anything like a collection of 

 Genistas. They go mad about geraniums 

 and fuchsias, and treat with contempt these 

 nymphs with golden hair. Canariensis, in 

 its old form, is a great favourite of mine, and 

 I thought your readers might like to be in- 

 formed how nearly hardy it is. I have a 

 number of fine plants, from three to five years 

 old, with huge globular heads ; some of them 

 measure five feet round ; one, trained out flat 

 for a particular purpose, measures two feet 

 six across, and is a dense mass of foliage 

 and flowers. Most of my stock of this plant 

 have this winter endured four degrees of 

 frost, and not one of them has been under 

 glass since the winter of 1856-7, when I was 

 obliged to house them for three weeks. I 

 keep them on a bed of coal-ashes under a 

 fence, which shelters them from the north, and 

 during the frosts we had during the greater 

 part of the month of February, they were shel- 

 tered at night only by laying an old shutter 

 over them, supported by a few large flower- 

 pots. They are now completely covered with 

 bloom-buds, and in a few weeks will begin 

 to bloom, and will continue gay till June. 

 The way in which I get them so hardy and 

 handsome is to plunge the pots out of doors 

 from April to November. As soon as they 

 are out of bloom, every stem is stopped in, 

 to promote a close, bushy growth all over 

 equally. In September they are stopped again 

 by clipping off the points of all the shoots 

 with a pair of scissors, and then they are left 

 to bloom in their own way, and almost 

 every joint produces a head of bloom. I pot 

 them once in two years ; after I have once got 

 them into five-inch pots, using equal parts of 



peat, loam, and leaf-mould, with a little 

 powdery old dung and silver sand. My 

 largest specimen measuring nearly six feet 

 round, is now in a six-inch pot, and has had 

 no shift since the summer of 1856, but the 

 surface soil is now and then refreshed with a 

 top-dressing of powdery dung. In spring, 

 when they are opening bloom, I generally 

 give them a top-dressing of fresh goats' dung, 

 — a material that I use in the same way for 

 pot roses, fuchsias, and calceolarias, and with 

 decided benefit to the plants. One reason 

 why I think Genistas are not so much grown 

 by amateurs as they should be, is the diffi- 

 culty of striking them. This difficulty bothered 

 me for years, and at last I succeeded in root- 

 ing the young shoots that break from the 

 sides of old stems, when they have been cut 

 in after blooming. As soon as these are an 

 inch and a half long, I take them off with 

 a heel, dibble them with a quill into sixties, 

 filled with peat and sand, cover with a bell- 

 glass, and plunge the pots into a half-ex- 

 hausted hot-bed. They are a long time 

 rooting, and grow slowly the first year, but 

 when three years old, I know of nothing 

 more welcome in the whole catalogue of spring 

 flowers. Genista Canariensis has been hy- 

 bridized with success. I had, some years 

 ago, a plant of G. C. atleeana, which is a 

 hybrid raised by Mr. Atlee ; its habit dense 

 and symmetrical, and a most abundant 

 bloomer. My specimen was ten feet high, 

 and had a splendid head, clothed to the base 

 of the stem. As all the Genistas seed freely, 

 they offer a tempting opportunity to ama- 

 teurs, and would be good subjects to begin 

 with in experimental cross-breeding. 



E. J. L. 

 [We think the Fuchsia a far more pro- 

 mising subject for a beginner than any 

 Genista, which are difficult to manipulate 

 with in the processes necessary to artificial 

 impregnation. Nor is any great result to be 

 expected from hybridizing Genistas, the 

 range of colouring among the species being 

 so limited — Ed. F. "YV.] 



