260 



JOUBNAIi OF HORTICULTUBE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. ( ScpUabor so, IBM. 



in Eizo and beantifnl in form — over an old wall, against the 

 side o/ a bouse, in Ibe biting north aspect, or the sunny south, 

 commend me to glorious Gloire, our constant, firm, nnfiincbing 

 friend. My old tree nt Einton covered a space at least IC feet 

 wjuare, and I once counted upwards of four hundred blooms 

 out at the same time. 



Time and space tuil me to write of many of my older favourites 

 — Jules Mnrgotlin.Mrs.lliverB, Madame Vidot.Baronne ileNoir- 

 mont, Franfi is Lacbarme, Cjmtesse Ctcile de Cbabrillant, a 

 gem ; AnRuste Mie, old, but often unsurpassed, in my humble 

 opinion ; Earonne Pi<; rost, Le Rhone, Madame Charles Crapelet, 

 yery lovely; Acidalie, small, but perfect in form, though very 

 soon dropping its petals; Madame Hector Jacquin ; Lurd Ma- 

 oaTiIay, brilliant in colour, very free in blooming; Vicomte 

 Vigier, a first-class Rose ; and Souvenir de la Malmaison, mag- 

 nificent though old, bnt a Cue-wealher Hose. Princess Mary of 

 Cambridge, like its royal godmother, must always be popular. 



Accidentally, the other .day in an old rectory garden I saw 

 some aged standard Rose trees, the stems were of giant pro- 

 portions ; but there I renewed an acquaintance with an old 

 favourite almost forgotten — viz., Bonla de Nanteuil ; and truly, 

 though flat, it is still a grand Rose. Amongst these Roses 

 was another old friend, my intimacy with which has not been 

 interrupted — namely, Conpe d'Hubfi. It was, as always, lovely 

 and elegant. Is a Rose collection complete even for us poor 

 " Bose-growers " without her? or, again, without Charles Law- 

 son, a giant in bloom, and lavish of bloom in spite of the size ? 

 01, again, beautifully formed Piiul Ricaut ? I recollect old 

 Thomas Cole, of the Wellow Rosery, near Bath, a name well 

 known among rosarians and Rose-crowers in the west, was 

 wont to remark that were Paul only a Perpetual no Rose would 

 ©qnal it. Another of his gieat favourites before the introduc- 

 tion of Gloire de Dijon was Lamarque. It was in those days 

 of old his Rose of selection ; bnt then it is decidedly tender ; 

 and oh ! that winter of some eight years ago, what havoc it 

 played with this identical Rose ! Many a grand tree iu my 

 " anld counthiie " was either entirely destroyed or reduced to 

 most diminutive propcrtions. 



I am running on, and need, perhaps, a thorn from one of 

 my pets to stop me ; but just a word on stocks. "C. W. M." 

 says that to all "true rosarians" "the Briar is doomed." 

 Well, as I do not profess to be a rosarian, only a poor Rose- 

 grower, I suppose I shall still slick to the old "friend for some 

 things. I have before said that my belief in the Manetti is 

 unbounded ; still, my experience in budding Tea Roses says they 

 have not the same high opinion of the Manetti that I have, 

 and I confess that, after seeing the reasons, my faith in the 

 Manetti as a stock for Tea Roses is considerably weakened. 

 The Noisette Roses also, I fancy, do better on the Briar; still, 

 in general gardening for effect, it is often necessary to have 

 Rose trees as standards. I am not so certain that the Manetti 

 answers budded, say, 2 feet from the ground. I have no doubt 

 that it does answer with some Roses — that is, if seeing is 

 believing ; but in these days, when some suggest that you 

 should believe nothing that yon hear and only half what you 

 see, it may, perhaps, be a question whether my eyesight has 

 been at fault, yet generally for this higher budding I do not 

 fancy it will answer. We must then fall back on the Briar, 

 and, setting aside the annoying suckers, some of cur best Roses 

 behave grandly on it. No one who has seen sach Roses as 

 Jules Margottin, Madame Victor Terdier, Charles Lefebvre, 

 Gloire de Dijon, Baronne Prevost, Charles Lawson, Marechal 

 Vaiilaut, Monsieur Neman, and others doing well on the Briar 

 would cry out much against that stock for them. We need to 

 study each Rose for itself. Some, as Lonis XIT., prefer stand- 

 ing on their own merits ; some, again, prefer the Briar ; while 

 the gre.it majority will do well, or better, on the Manetti than 

 on anything else. We all have our whims, why should not 

 Roses ?— Y. E. A. Z. 



P.S.— My advice to " C. A. G." ni re Manetti stock, is to try 

 a few. Any impartial person will soon see the difference of 

 the rapid growth and free blooming, compared to the same 

 Rose on the Briar. The Manetti has one disadvantge — that its 

 foliage being larger than the Briar, it is by young hands often 

 mistaken for the actual Rose, and a sucker I have frequently 

 known nurtured and tended as if certain to produce a store of 

 exhibition blooms. With the Briar such an error is impossible, 

 because it is discovered immediately. If the disbudding is 

 thorough and deep in the Manetti cutting, it can very rarely 

 happen there. 



I must again repeat that I have seen very respectable heads 

 on the Manetti budded as a half-standard ; but as seeing, even, 



is not always believing, I agree, humbly and at a long distanee, 

 with the Rev. W. F. Radclyffe, that the right way is to bury 

 the junction, and many Roses will the Urgt year throw out 

 their own roots. 



The Rev. W. F. Badclyffa writes, " The Manetti stock is not 

 an imposition." If he will allow me, I will say ditto to him 

 as strongly as it is possible or allowable for me to say. It has 

 been my lot during the last few years to be constantly seeing 

 two of the largest nursery gardens in the neighbourhood of 

 Bath. One does not exhibit, the other is continually to the 

 front : both have a large stock of Manetti-budded Roses, and in 

 both it is considered for general purposes first-rate ; it is in one 

 of these gardens that I have seen the snccessfol half-standard 

 Manetti budding; but the soil where these half-standards were 

 is peculiar — very rich, and it had formed at one time, if I 

 recollect rightly, the bed of a canal. If the Manetti stock 

 were the only " imposition " in the gardening world, we 

 should all of us have reason to be proud of the purity of otir 

 hobby.— Y. B. A. Z. 



IKFLUENCE OF THE STOCK UPON THE 

 GRAFT. 



[Mr. Fej,-n, of the Rectory, Woodstock, whose specimens of 

 Ribston Pippin Apple, from trees grafted on the Blenheim 

 Pippin, were brought before the last meeting of the Royal Horti- 

 cultural Society's Frnit Committee (see page 24.5), has favoQied 

 us with the following account of his experiments. — Eds.] 



Eleves years ago I happened to be near an old Ribston 

 Pippin tree, in the last stage of canker; near it were some old 

 but most vigorous trees of Blenheim Pippin. (This excellent 

 Apple was raised by a man of the name of Kempster, of Old 

 Woodstock ; I saw the original tree when I tirst came to reside 

 here, and afterwards when 1 wished to procure a piece of its 

 wood as a memento, I found that it had been cut down, and 

 given to the fire.) At the time 1 saw the above-mentioned 

 trees so flourishing by the side of my favourite Apple, the 

 Ribston Pippin, it occurred to me whether it would not be 

 possible to infuse new vigour and strength of constitution into 

 that stunted and unhealthy form of Ribston Pippin generaUy 

 met with about the country, producing ill-conditioned foliage, 

 and immature fruit. With this view I sowed some pips of the 

 Blenheim Pippin, as being most likely, from the healthy, 

 vigorous character of the variety, to produce a stock that would 

 bring about a change for the better; also to prove whether the 

 influence of fresh and vigorous sap from a young and free- 

 growing stock would remedy the destructive canker in the bark, 

 and, as a consequence, add fresh life to the Ribston Pippin. 



By the time the second year's growth of the seedling Blen- 

 heim Pippins had arrived, I singled out the strongest stock of 

 the batch, one having a fork — that is to say, branches springing 

 from its base. This stock I grafted with two miserable-looking 

 scions from the diseased Ribston Pippin, both of which to my 

 astonishment succeeded, and by the folloning year they had 

 made strong growth. The tree was placed against a wall, and I 

 then determined to carry my experiment further by removing 

 one of the grafts just above its union with the stock. In order 

 to do so, I removed with a penknife about 2 inches of bark all 

 round quite down to the wood, h}' this means causing the for- 

 mation of a cicatrix. Further, 1 tied damp moss round the 

 limb, then bent it down, and fixed it horizontally upon the 

 earth, with which I covered the moss, keeping all constantly 

 moistened during the summer and autumn. The limb which 

 was thus ringed rooted into the moss and soil readily, and in 

 the following November, when it was safe to do so, I severed 

 the limb, or graft, entirely from the tree, and planted it in a 

 pot, where it has continued to make good and clean growths of 

 wood, though of not nearly so vigorous a character as its fellow 

 scion, which is still growing on its stock raised from the pip of 

 the Blenheim Pippin. 



The tree agaiust the wall produced its first fruit in 1^66, and 

 it has produced good crops ever since, especially during the 

 present unfavourable season. The bark of the stem and 

 branches is remarkably smooth, and free from canker, and the 

 foliage is vigorous and highly developed, partaking very much of 

 the character of that of the Blenheim Pippin, whilst the fmit 

 bear a striking resemblance, in general form, to those of the 

 Ribston Pippin, and thcnph smaller this season, are usually 

 about the size of those on a healthy tree of the latter variety. In 

 textnre of flesh the fruit is not so solid as that of the Ribston 

 Pippin, and unfortunately it has not half the flavour of the 



