THE FLORAL WORLD AND GARDEN GUIDE. 



203 



which should be as soon as they begin to 

 shake off their lower leaves and make new 

 growth at top. The oak-leaved, varie- 

 gated-leaved, and such other choice kinds 

 are the best from spring cuttings, so that, 

 unless struck in July, and got strong 

 before winter, it is best to wait till the 

 old plants break well in spring, and then 

 strike cuttings in small pots in sand. 

 The same with petunias and most of the 

 verbenas : keep a few old plants to cut 

 from in February, then start them to get 

 shoots, and so save yourself a vast deal of 

 trouble to keep young stock, about which 

 there is always a risk, unless you have a 

 house and heating apparatus to maintain a 

 temperature of 45 degs., and even then 

 room is often of more value than a lot of 

 young plants, that may be had in bloom 

 almost as early if struck in February and 

 March. But people will strike verbenas, 

 and the readiness with which they root 

 now is a great temptation. Where the 

 pegs have held the plants down, the joints 

 will be found to be well rooted, and these 

 rooted pieces make good plants, if cut into 

 moderate compass and potted in rather 

 poor soil. But a still better way is to plunge 

 a lot of thumb pots under the second or 

 third joint from the point of each of the 

 main branches, and peg the joint down, 

 or fix it with a stone so that it will root 

 into the pot at once, and give you a plant 

 which, when cut away from the parent, 

 will not have a scrap of old stem about 

 it. Robinson's Defiance, so much prized 

 as the best of the scarlets, keeps in cold 

 frames as well as calceolarias and cinerarias, 

 and these latter are the hardiest of all the 

 soft-wooded greenhouse plants, and will 

 keep without fire-heat in any part of the 

 three kingdoms. To secure a stock of 

 Lobelias, take up a sufficient number of 

 plants the first week in September, and 

 pot them singly in forty-eights to cut from 

 in spring, when the young shoots strike 

 readily in sand and water. Two or three 

 plants will furnish half-a-thousand cut- 

 tings if well managed, and so, from Sep- 

 tember to February, lobelias need not 

 demand much room. Ageratums and 

 heliotropes treat in the same way, but 

 remember the fragrant cherry pie is the 

 most susceptible of frost of all the bedders, 

 and will not stand even one degree for one 

 night, nor will it bear to be dried up in the 



way we are accustomed to serve gera- 

 niums. Calceolarias should never be 

 struck early in the seasonr Begin at the 

 end of September to take young waxen 

 shoots from the bottoms of the stools, put 

 them in close all over the surface, in 

 five-inch pots, well drained, and filled to 

 near the rim with leaf-mould and sand, 

 and with a tuft of moss between the 

 soil and the di-ainage, to ensure a little 

 moisture to the roots at such times when 

 severe weather would render it dangerous 

 to give them water over-head. Among 

 my make-shifts last winter, I potted a 

 quantity of calceolaria cuttings in this 

 way, and never put them into frames or 

 shelter of any kind. They stood all to- 

 gether in a warm corner, were kept moist, 

 were several times frozen hard, and only 

 carried in-doors for a few days and nights 

 in the hardest weather. They are now 

 better plants than those supplied in the 

 spring by a very safe trade-grower, on 

 whom I depend for soft-wooded stock, 

 but of course they had good frame culture 

 from the moment it was safe to turn them 

 out of their cutting-pots. They consist 

 of Orange Boven, Amplexicaulis, Rugosa, 

 Gem, and Aurea floribunda, the last a 

 capital bedder, growing as close as Little 

 David geranium, and forming dense polls 

 rather than trusses, of very bright orange 

 blooms. Fuchsias everybody can keep. 

 If safe from frost, damp and darkness suit 

 them as well as daylight, till they begin to 

 break, and the hardier sorts, such as 

 Riccartoni, Globosa, Gracihs, &c., may be 

 cut over close to the ground in December 

 and covered with a few dead leaves, and 

 the cuttings put into pots, and stowed 

 away in frames, or trimmed to six-inch 

 lengths of ripe wood, and put in the 

 open ground just as you would propagate 

 currant and gooseberry trees, only that 

 you must thrust them down, so as to 

 leave only the top joint above the surface ; 

 that joint will perish, but the wood will 

 throw up strong shoots in May, and by 

 this simple method any quantity of plants 

 may be had along the back of a border or 

 the front of a shrubbery, with none of the 

 trouble or expense of turning out plants 

 in spring. Fuchsia Riccartoni and Snow- 

 berry make the best of light flower-sticks 

 if the ripe stems are trimmed up and 

 dried in the sun, at the end of the season. 



:ooooocooocoooO'C 



To Amateur Fern Growers. — A Silver Cup, value £10 10s., has been offered by 

 T. H. Stainton, Esq., for the best collection of twenty British Ferns, of not less than 

 fifteen distinct species, to be shown at the Crystal Palace Exhibition of the 8th and 9th of 

 September next. Not more than two plants of one kind will be admitted, and preferenxe 

 will be given to the collection having the greatest number of species, provided the plants 

 are in other respects equal. The prize is offered to amateurs only. 



