638 



The Weekly Florists^ Review* 



MARCH 17, 1S9S. 



mums in the same soil tliat carna- 

 tions have been growing in all win- 

 ter?" 



Scarcely advisable for the very best 

 results, but often done, and if an ad- 

 dition of one-sixth of rotten manure 



neither a pipe above the plants or un- 

 der the bench is In the right place. On 

 the sides of the house two feet away 

 from the plants is the proper place for 

 the pipes, whether it be steam or hot 

 water. For roses, I would say pre- 



Development of Young Fern. 



and a pint of bone flour to one bushel 

 of the soil on the bench is added be- 

 fore planting mums, you should pro- 

 duce good flowers, providing it was 

 good soil to start with. The most par- 

 ticular thing would be to see that the 

 soil was in the proper condition when 

 you threw away the carnations and 

 prepared it for the mums. If wet, and 

 you worked it while in a sticky state, 

 you would ruin it for any purpose, and 

 could only be cured by a freezing. See 

 that the bench is dry or fairly dry 

 before you handle it. 



"Which is best for growing roses 

 and carnations for cut flowers, the 

 overhead flow pipe system of heating 

 or a pipe under the bench?" 



This has been discussed by profound 

 thinkers of the profession for years 

 and at such length that it seems pre- 

 sumption for me at this late date to 

 pass an opinion, but as I am asked the 

 question and have decided views of 

 my own, will say that for carnations 



cisely the same. The man who would 

 build benches against the walls of the 

 house and pipes under them for grow- 

 ing flowers is a back number. 



W. S. 



YOUNG FERNS THROUGH A 

 MICROSCOPE. 



Every gardener knows full well that 

 ferns start from spores. Upon the un- 

 derside of the leaves of such ferns as 

 dicksonias, aspidiums and polypo- 

 diums, the spore-spots are produced in 

 quite regular order. They look like 

 small heaps of brown powder or per- 

 haps more nearly like the sawdust pro- 

 duced by bark-boring insects. The 

 writer has been asked many times what 

 these brown spots are, and there was 

 often much surprise and occasionally 

 some little doubt when informed that 

 these spots are the "nests" where the 

 ferns rear their young. 



With a hand lens these spore spots, 



called sori by the botanists, consist 

 usually of small bodies that are raised 

 upon short, slender stalks and packed 

 together so closely as to make a tuft. 

 Each of the projecting bodies is a spore 

 case and is shaped somewhat like a 

 tennis racquette with the net work 

 made into a sac. In these sacs the fern 

 spores are produced and escape by the 

 rupture often with some violence thus 

 scattering the spores. 



With the above as a preliminary we 

 are ready lo consider the spore and 

 note something of its growth into a 

 fern plant. Unlike a seed a spore has 

 no plantlet already formed within the 

 two walls, but instead there is simply 

 a mass of rich substance which is called 

 protoplasm. 



Similar to seeds, however, the fern 

 spores require for their growth a good 

 degree of moisture and heat and the 

 presence of the air. Without any one 

 of these three conditions the spore or 

 the seed would fail to develop a plant. 



That which takes place in the ger- 

 mination of the fern spore is the taking 

 up of water and the bursting of the 

 thick brown coat and then through the 

 opening thus formed the inner thin 

 wall protrudes and begins to become 

 green. In fact two kinds of cells form, 

 the one set producing a very thin green 

 expansion, smaller than the nail upon 

 a baby's little finger, while at the same 

 time slender cells of a brown color 

 grow downward and serve to fasten the 

 thin green scale to the place of sup- 

 port. 



That which is of greatest interest are 

 the organs produced upon the small 

 green scale above described. If we 

 look at a pot of young ferns there is very 

 little to suggest the parent ferns from 

 which the gardener secured the spores. 

 The whole surface of the soil is covered 

 with a green growth more like a liver- 

 wort than a fern. A little later on 

 small leaves begin to arise from the 

 green coating upon the soil. If these 

 young leaves are lifted from the mat 

 of seedlings they will each be found 

 attached to a minute kidney-shaped 

 scale. In short the leaf has come from 

 the scale, but not until a process has 

 been gone through, which it is the pur- 

 pose here to describe. 



Upon the underside of each scale, 

 called by the botanist prothallus, there 

 are two sets of organs, which in use are 

 allied to the pistil and stamens found 

 in flowers. The organs that are like 

 stamens produce instead of pollen a 

 number of minute bodies that are pro- 

 vided with swimming organs requiring 

 the high powers of the microscope for 

 seeing them. These antherozoids, as 

 they are termed, pass from the place 

 where they are produced to the female 

 organ, which consists of a cell rich in 

 protoplasm and surrounded by other 

 cells producing a canal leading down 

 from the surface to the cell to be fer- 

 tilized. The antherozoids pass down 

 this neck and mingling with the proto- 

 plasm, cause a new life to develop in 

 and egg-cell as it sometimes is called 



