84 TRANSACTIONS OF THE [Sess. lxxxvi 



that might have been destroyed by fungus pests. The 

 linkage of so-called " practice and theory " should be self- 

 evident, if there ever was any doubt about it. The past 

 fifty years have seen ever-increasing specialisation in the 

 various branches of botany, almost a separation of the 

 schools. Yet the same period has seen the evolution of 

 agricultural botany and other collateral branches of the 

 parent botan}', where the purpose is to join together link 

 by link the facts bearing on the problems peculiar to the 

 economic need. 



Note on a Seedling of Cytisus Adami. 

 By T. Bennet Clark, C.A. 



(Read 17th November 1921.) 



I should explain that I have come to submit this note 

 on a seedling of Cytisus Adami as the outcome of my 

 having attended, at the recent Edinburgh meeting of the 

 British Association, an interesting lecture by Professor 

 Weiss upon " Graft Hybrids," a subject which has for a 

 long time interested botanical students, and as to which I 

 believe there is still a great deal to be discovered. 



The pink-flowered Laburnum, C. Adami, is a graft 

 hybrid, and propagation is secured by grafting the hybrid 

 on Laburnum stock — the common yellow - flowered 

 Laburnum or one of its varieties, — and in this way 

 nurseiymen maintain their supply of the shrub. 



I might perhaps refer to the history of C. Adami. In 

 1825 a gardener called Adam, who was interested in 

 grafting and budding, had budded on a yellow Laburnum 

 a shield or bud of the well-known Cytisus purpureas, a 

 low-growing and rather spreading shrub with purple 

 flowers in the axils of the leaves of the young wood — the 

 plant being rather a subject for the rock garden than for 

 the shrubbery. I have been told that it had been the 

 custom to graft or to bud this plant on a Laburnum stem 

 as a standard, and the C. purpureus grew and flowered at 

 the top much like a Standard Rose. But this particular 

 h>ud of ,Mr. Adam's "did not take," as a gardener would 



