THE FLORAL WORLD AND GARDEN GUIDE. 



135 



living, and so mad to grow instead of 

 rational to give fruit '( When, over well 

 fed, figs are as barren as when starved. 



Lilt of the Valley. — M. A. wishes to 

 know why Lilies of the Valley, which 

 she has had in a flower-pot the last 

 three years, will not flower ? She 

 plunges the pot in the ground through- 

 out the year, and the end of February 

 puts it into a hot-bed, the pot is now 

 full of plants and leaves, but no bloom. 

 Also she cannot succeed in getting fine 

 plants of the Neapolitan Violet to bloom 

 early in the spring ; the old plants turned 

 out in May make plenty of runners 

 which never root properly by September, 

 and the young plants are to be potted, 

 are they not ? [The Lilies of the Valley 

 are starved by being kept so long in 

 the same pot without a change of soil. 

 They should have a shift into a larger 

 pot in September, or, better still, shake 

 them out completely, and repot them in 

 rich, turfy loam. But this is not all you 

 should do. To force them into early 

 bloom, place them on a hot-bed in 

 February, and when they have d one 

 blooming keep them in a warm p'ace 

 till their leaves are thoroughly ripe, and 

 then put them out in a sheltered place 

 where there will be no danger of the 

 foliage being torn by wind. You have 

 probably injured the plants much by re- 

 moving them from the comfort of a hot- 



\ bed to some cold windyplace out of doors. 

 The reason the Neapolitan Violets do not 

 root is that they are not kept sufficiently 

 moist. Pot the young plants, or better 

 still, plant them out in a cold frame, 

 where they will make fine plants, and 

 bloom satisfactorily, and if a few are 

 wanted in pots, the finest can be selected 

 when in bloom, and if potted carefully 

 will not suffer.] 



Failure of Spring Flowers. — Goose- 

 berry Caterpillar. — My tulips and 

 ranunculus beds have not done well this 

 year. I fear it may be from the wire- 

 worm. My gardener says the beds want 

 a winter's rest, as they have been used 

 winter and summer fur bulbs and bed- 

 ding plants for ten years. This, I think, 

 is a mistake, as new mould is added 

 every year with manure, and if the earth 

 required rest I tell him he may remove 

 what is in the beds and bring fresh. I 

 ordered a hundred citron colour roots of 

 Turk's Cap ranunculus, and have only 

 about a dozen come up that colour ; the 

 others are scarlet, and I find my whites 

 and yellows are mixed with scarlet. I 



' conclude this is the fault of the vendor 

 not of the soil. Is it likely the roots 



change colour ? My tulips [seem also 

 to have changed colour ; is there any 

 alteration in these bulbs from age '? Will 

 the cutting blooms from the Hoya inter- 

 fere with the blooming the next year, as 

 the blooms seem to come out from the 

 old blooming stalks. I find unsound 

 potatoes, carrots, etc., catch more wire- 

 worms than the sound ones. I have 

 been examining my gooseberry trees, 

 and I find no good from planting beans 

 among them. I have several with broad 

 bean stalks growing in the middle of 

 the bush, and yet the bush covered with 

 the caterpillar. — A. B. S., Torquay. 

 [Yours is not the only case of failure 

 with tulips this season, though we have, 

 as yet, heard but few complaints. 

 Amongst our lot were many that never 

 grew at all, and we have lately taken 

 them up sound and hard as when planted, 

 and put them all in the reserve ground 

 where they will remain to die or grow 

 two years as they please, without being 

 allowed to flower. The majority will 

 probably be then fine bulbs, and will pay 

 for the ground they occupy. When at 

 the Royal Botanic Gardens on the 30th 

 of April last, the tulips were in full 

 bloom and looking magnificent ; but on 

 inspecting the beds we found that great 

 "breadths had failed entirely, so that the 

 designs were in some cases all on one 

 side, like a soldier with one tail of his 

 coat off, or a hirsute personage clean 

 shaved on one side of the face [vide Bar- 

 num's Autobiography). We had a con- 

 versation with the experts there, and 

 with them came to the conclusion that 

 in the places where the bulbs had per- 

 ished, there had probably been a lodg- 

 ment of water during the winter, which 

 had killed or damaged them. As to the 

 ranunculuses we have heard strange 

 tales of varieties believed to be perman- 

 ent changing their hues, but we never 

 saw the thing take place in such a way 

 that it could be determined with cer- 

 tainty that there had been no mixing 

 beforehand but a positive change in the 

 colours of the flowers. Show tulips sport 

 very freely, and growers take great inte- 

 rest in noting the various shades of dif- 

 ference in examples of the same variety 

 in the same bed ; dahlias again pass 

 through many changes, and sometimes 

 are rarely "caught" in proper form and 

 colouring. Pansies are sometimes very 

 much changed during hot weather, so 

 that a white or yellow ground will be- 

 come a self, and when genial weather 

 a"-ain returns the flowers will be perfect. 

 We could write a mile of printed matter 



