STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 63 



FLORICULTURE IN SOUTH CALIFORXIA. 



By L. M. Ford, San Diego, Cdl. 



To one who has resided so luaDy years in the cold and stormy 

 Korth, the change from St. Paul, Minn., to the extreme south- 

 ern end of California seems more like a dream than a stern 

 reality. Xor did I ever dream, even three years ago, that my 

 home, as well as that of some others who settled in 1850, where 

 now is growing up the great dual city of the mighty Xorthwestern 

 Empire, would now be where there is really no winter, and we 

 only use the term from force of habit. 



Two years ago, some letters from this State, by a fair correspond- 

 ent of the Pto^iet'r P/*e*s, attracted my attention, and being quite 

 unwell, I was only too glad to learn more in regard to a land 

 where the floral treasures I had so fondly cared for in thegreeu- 

 house were wont to revel in their beauty, every month in the 

 year, and after a manner that can not be equaled in the finest 

 bay window or conservatory. Where, too, the delicate hum- 

 mingbird and the '' busy bee "are seen, both in June and January, 

 gaily flitting from flower to flower, in search of the nectar they 

 love so well. 



And now that I am here and have seen with my own eyes the 

 wonderful product, of this incomparable land, I can most truth- 

 fully exclaim, with the poet. '• December's as pleasant as May." 



Here in San Diego it is not an exaggeration to say that the 

 last month of the twelve is far more pleasant than May in the 

 land where I was somewhat busily engaged in horticultural work 

 for more than a third of a century, though in looking back it all 

 seems but a few brief months. 



In Minnesota, as all know, it is not deemed safe to set out our 

 tenderest plants until the last of May or first of June, while here 

 it's a rare thing for even alternanthera to be killed by frost, 

 except in low places. An old settler tells me his Poinsettia pul- 

 cherrima has been injured only three times during a residence 

 here of fifteen years, while such things as geraniums, verbenas, 

 abutilons, roses, pansies, petunias, habrothamus and most 

 greenhouse plants that endure a little frost, are never killed but 

 grow to an immense size. Indeed some things we used to know only 

 as little pot plants, here become quite large trees. This applies 

 to lautanas, hibiscus, flowering maples, habrothamus, olean- 

 ders, roses, and some others, while the heliotrope can often be 



