1885.] 



AND HORTICULTURIST. 



297 



good many years I handled the fullest collection 

 of cactaceous plants in the country, and twice a 

 year every plant passed through my own hands. 

 I myself planted them out in May and lifted or re- 

 potted them in September, and all because I was 

 afraid if I trusted any of the workmen with the 

 job they would be more careful of themselves 

 than of the Cactuses. And I can assure you no 

 orchidist ever watched the progress of Vanda San- 

 deriana or Phalsnopsis Stuartii with more anxious 

 pride than I did my Cereus Thurburi, C. Palmeri, 

 C. Greggi, Echinocactus myriostigma, E. Phylla- 

 canthus and other pets. And how disgusted I 

 would get when to some visitor 1 would point ap- 

 provingly to Cereus giganteus, 20 inches high and 

 10 years old, to be informed, " Oh, that's nothing ; 

 you should have seen it at the Centennial." And 

 sol did, and elsewhere, too; but such another 

 life-long, garden-grown plant as that is 1 never 

 came across east of the Mississippi. 



I have found that each and every kind of Cac- 

 tus that I have grown will do well in a gritty, 

 turfy loam. Drain the pots well and pack the 

 soil firmly. Lime rubbish, pounded bricks or rot- 

 ten stone added to the soil has no visible beneficial 

 effect whatever ; the drainage will not clog nor 

 the soil get sour if you don't over-water your 

 plants. Glen Cove, Long Island, New York. 



PROPAGATING FROM BLIND'WOOD. 

 BY ERNEST WALKER. 



Experience is a good but expensive school, and 

 those that learn there are not apt to forget their 

 lessons. One of my first lessons was in growing 

 fuchsias for flowering. I took cuttings of blind 

 shoots and they grew and grew and made splendid 

 plants, but they attained quite a size before they 

 did as well blooming. A little philosophy as to 

 the trouble suggested using cuttings from old 

 plants that we might say were on the point of 

 flowering. The result was. the plants came in 

 bloom even sooner than I had any idea of, and 1 

 had a fine lot of globular plants, about 10 inches 

 high, full of bloom while yet in 2 li-inch pots. It 

 is the same way with Heliotropes and other plants. 

 One season we propagated a lot of Chrysanthe- 

 mums late, and in fall had plants about 6 inches 

 high, covered with bloom, which astonished those 

 who saw them, and thought they were dwarf till 

 we explained. It is clear now. The length of 

 time required, and the ease in getting plants to 

 bloom, depend greatly on how far the disposition 

 of the parent plant to bloom is developed. If we 



take cuttings from a plant on which the bloom 

 buds are already beginning to form, we can have 

 them in bloom in the cutting bed ; or, if we take 

 them from a plant in which the disposition to 

 bloom is not yet beginning to develop, or, a plant 

 devoting its energies to growth instead of reproduc- 

 tion (flowering), we will have to wait forblooming 

 some time — till that stage naturally arrives, or 

 depend on unusually favorable circumstances. 



I have on some occasions had trouble in getting 

 varieties of roses to bloom that ordinarily were 

 very profuse, while others around them were 

 blooming bountifully, and which other seasons 

 had bloomed readily. The trouble was, no doubt, 

 in the cuttings from which the plants came. Propa- 

 gators do not generally discriminate between the 

 bloom and blind shoot in selecting cuttings ; be- 

 sides, the blind shoot may offer such fine cuttings, 

 and It is difficult for the propagator to resist the 

 temptation ; and some poor amateur or florist 

 must pay the cost — perplexed to know the cause. 



New Albany, Ind. 



[A very long chapter in a treatise on the Theory 

 of Horticulture, might be worked out from the 

 articles that have appeared in the Gardeners' 

 Monthly on this topic. The author of such a 

 chapter might begin by reminding his reader that 

 a plant was not an individual like an animal; 

 but rather a collection of individuals, something 

 like a city or a republic, and that these individuals 

 had hereditary powers, like the individual in the 

 animal world. We can cut these individuals from 

 the community, plant the cuttings, and each will 

 retain the characteristics it possessed when cut 

 off, just as a seedling plant would do. He would 

 prove this by what are known as sports. A branch 

 of a rose exhibits some peculiarity. It is cut off 

 and placed on its own roots, and then we have 

 Sunsets, American Banner, Isabella Sprunt, and 

 so on. Or, a branch of a peach may produce a 

 a nectarine. We take that branch, bud from it, 

 and we have lots of nectarine trees. B'-iefly we 

 have the theory that any part of a plant has an 

 hereditary character of its own, as well as the 

 whole plant itself. 



Now apply this to the case in point. Will 

 plants from a barren shoot be as floriferous as 

 plants from flowering ones ? Theoretically we 

 should say not. But it is rather a question for ex- 

 perience to settle. Mr. Walker's observations 

 confirm this. Those of other observers do not 

 seem to have done so. 



But in all these discussions we must not forget 

 that in nature there are numbers of operations 



