CHAPTER XX. 



NUTRIENT DISEASES— INCIDENTAL PESTS- COHERING PETALS 



—BARREN CARNATIONS— PURPLE JOINT (I^osetfe)—'RVT- 



TURED CALYXES— DOUBLE FLOWERING CARNATIONS. 



NATURE and sethetics revolt at a ruptured calyx. Their 

 sweetest lyric is a perfect flower. The unfoldment ot 

 carnations has been along lines of least resistance. It is 

 easier for vital force to multiply and broaden petals, than to in- 

 crease the capacity of the calyx to accomodate them. Double 

 flowers are abnormal, and it is not strange the process by which 

 they are reached from the single flowering state should be marked 

 by inharmony of structural development, the law of co-relation 

 being broken in its evolutionary march between the petal sand the 

 calyx. 



The petals of a carnation flower contain different elements, on 

 analysis, from any other part of the plant. They inhale oxygen 

 and exhale carbonic acid gas, reversing the function of the foliage. 

 The calyx is composed of slow growing and strong fibers, feebly 

 connected with each other, and easily torn apart, while the petils 

 are soft, vascular, and grow rapidly; the sun paints the plant green 

 with chlorophyll, and the petals with a paradise of colors. It is 

 reasonable a hiatus should occur between the natural and artificial, 

 the calyx and petals, where difference in structures, functions and 

 momentums of life meet. A bursting carnation can never be 

 cured. Mrs. Carnegie, one of the best white-variegated varieties, 

 was an immune to all remedies, lived with this disease and died 

 with its terrors. 



Bursting is aggravated by sudden changes of temperature and 

 imperfect ventilation. The calyx, is strengthened by air and light, 

 given to buds on well supported stems. Heat also lengthens the 

 claws of the petals and lifts their breadth farther out of the mouth 

 pf the calyx. Nature and selection, in cross-fertilization, is co-ordi-» 



