THE GERANIUM AND ITS CULTURE. 



79 



out all the anthers as soon as you can get 

 hold of them, and when the pistil becomes 

 glutinous take the anthers from some flower 

 with a good quality that you wish to obtain 

 on thick petalled flowers, and put the dust 

 on the pistil of those you are to seed from. 

 The most easy method of conveying the 

 powder from the anthers of a flower is on a 

 camel's-hair pencil ; but it is the same thing 

 in efl^ect if you take the flower and touch 

 the pistil of the seeding plant with the an- 

 thers, for enough powder is sure to leave 

 the anthers and attach itself to the pistil to 

 answer all the purposes of fertilization. 

 The plants to be seeded will need little or 

 no care, unless they have to be covered in 

 very stormy weather. The truss may be 

 gathered when the seed is nearly ripe ; 

 and by hanging it up, or laying it down in 

 the sun, it will ripen, and the seed must be 

 looked after if any of it escapes ; to pre- 

 vent this, however, as it dries, it is well to 

 put it in shallow boxes or drawers to dry. 

 This seed may be sown in the spring, in 

 wide-mouthed pots of soil such as we have 

 recommended for general culture. The 

 seeds should be sown thinly, so as not to 

 crowd each other, because you are quite as 

 likely to waste a good one as a bad one in 

 the event of losing any; place it in the 

 green-house, or, if you like to hasten it, 

 you may raise it on a hot-bed ; but where 

 the geraniums are preparing for bloom, and 

 the temperature is moderate, will do very 

 well. Place a bell glass over the seeds till 

 they vegetate, when they may have air, 

 which you can give by uncovering them. 

 As soon as they are up and large enough 

 to take hold of, prick them out an inch 

 apart in other large pots, for a great body 

 of earth is far less liable to changes than a 

 small one, and therefore there is less dan- 

 ger of their suffering from dryness. Here 

 they may keep growing until they begin to 

 be crowded, when they may be put into 

 sixty-sized pots, well drained, and filled 

 with the compost recommended for the or- 

 dinary culture. When these pots are filled 

 with roots, change them to forty-eight-sized 

 pots, and from them, as soon as necessary, 

 to size thirty-two, iti which they may bloom, 

 when you give away, or throw away all 

 that are not better than you possess al- 

 ready ; and if you cannot do this very 



readily, cut off' all the blooms, to prevent 

 their spoiling any seed that may be dis- 

 posed to set on thp best of the flowers in 

 the collection. For all the good they are, 

 they may be turned into the open air, or 

 into frames ; or, if you have a house de- 

 voted to seedlings, and there are but few 

 good out of a large number, the good ones 

 may be removed to another house, and 

 those which are of no other use may be left 

 in the place they occupy, to use for cut 

 flowers, as people are not hypercritical as to 

 the forms of a geranium in a bouquet. 

 When a seedling is found very good, so 

 that there is no doubt about eventually 

 naming and propagating it, the sooner all 

 the spare pieces can be taken off" and 

 struck, the better, because cuttings struck 

 early become plants in time to propagate 

 from again ; and from a single cutting 

 taken in April or May many others can be 

 obtained before the autumn ; while the ori- 

 ginal plant, denuded of some of its branch- 

 es, pushes into fresh growth, and affords 

 the means of rapidly increasing the variety. 



PROPERTIES OF THE GERANIUM OR PELAR- 

 GONIUM. 



1. The petals should be thick, broad, 

 blunt, and smooth at the edges, and slightly 

 cupped. 



2. The flower should be circular, higher 

 at the edges than in the centre (so as to 

 fc.rm rather a hollow, though by no means 

 a deeply cupped bloom,) without puckering 

 or frilling; and where the petals lap over 

 each other, the indentation caused by the 

 join should be hardly perceptible. 



3. The petals should lie close on each 

 other, so as to appear a whole flower rather 

 than a five-petalled flower. 



4. The stem should be straight, strong, 

 elastic, carrying the blooms well above the 

 foliage. The footstalks of the individual 

 flowers should be stiff", and of sufficient 

 length to allow the flowers to show them- 

 selves in an even head, fitting compactly 

 edge to edge, and forming a uniform bold 

 tru ^s. 



5. The colour should be bright and 

 dense, whether it be scarlet, crimson, rose 

 colour, purple, lilac, or any of the modifica- 

 tions; the spots on the upper petals should 

 be boldly contrasted with the ground, and 

 the darker the better : both upper petals 



