370 THE FLOEAL WOELD AND GAKDEJ^ GDIDE. 



CELOSIA PYRAMID ALIS PLUMOSA FOR WINTER 

 DECORATIONS. 



BY E. S. TATES, 

 Nurseries, Sale, Cheshire. 



|0U will, I am well sure, agree with me that there are not 

 many plants of greater value for winter decorations 

 than Celosia pyra/inidalis plumosa, for you bave seen 

 our plants on more than one occasioD, and are well able 

 to appreciate the rich and striking effect they produce 

 when at their best. Bat to possess any great value the specimens 

 must be well grown and represent a first-class strain. This celosia 

 is not much known in its true character, for, more often than not, 

 those who take it in hand have, for their trouble, stunted plants, 

 bearing miserable tufts of the size of the top joint of the little 

 finger i'or side branches, and a tuft at the top that may be likened 

 to a finger cut from a worn-out glove. The general appearance is 

 that of a coekt*comb run wild. Now a good specimen raised from 

 seed saved from a good strain will attain a height of five or six 

 feet, and be furnished nearly the whole length of its stem with side- 

 branches, each bearing a large tuft of inflorescence that may be 

 likened to a bunch of feathers or a spike of the pampas-grass. 

 Nothing can be more elegant than these plumes, and in colour they 

 are of surpassing richness. The colours vary from the most intense 

 amethyst or vinous purple to pale yellow and bufl', tinted orange. 

 Each plant produces, of course, plumes of the same colour ; but from 

 a packet of seed you obtain all the colours here mentioned. The 

 gseat size, intense colour, density, and lustre of these plumes, render 

 them amongst the most remarkable of all known vegetable produc- 

 tions at this season of the year ; and a specimen of the size here 

 mentioned will produce sufficient separate plumes for a long series of 

 decorations. 



People who have been accustomed to the miserable examples so 

 common in gardens suppose, when they see our specimens, that we 

 are in possession of some important secret bearing on their cultiva- 

 tion. But it is not so, for there is really no secret at all. We begin 

 with good seed, but precisely the same as is saved for supplying 

 customers, and we treat the plaaits generously throughout. They 

 like heat and moisture and a rich, mellow, loamy soil, to which a 

 moderate proportion of well-decayed manure and leaf-mould have 

 been added. They must also be shifted on into larger pots ; for if 

 you would have specimens of the stature of a man, and well-fm'- 

 nished with the plumy inflorescence, the plants must not, whilst 

 in a small state, be kept in the pots a day longer than they have 

 well-filled them with roots. To this point I would direct special 

 attention, because of so many failures occurring through the plants 

 being kept starving in small pots until they have become so stunted 

 that the most skilful management will fail in setting them right 

 again. The cultivator should, at the beginning, determine upon the 



