THE FLOEAL YVOELD AND GAEDEN GUIDE. 183 



flower most vigorously for sis or seven summers, with many blossoms 

 nearly five inches broad. But I have flowered plants very well for 

 two or three years on rich, dry, sandy ground ; on such, however, they 

 soon cease to flower freely and become worthless. I am satisfied that 

 the age and condition of the plaut is of more importance that the 

 quality of the ground. The nurseries here comprehend soil of almost 

 every sort, common, and of very opposite qualities, and I have never 

 failed in flowering young plants well for a few years on spots appa- 

 rently very unsuitable. 



When seedling plants have grown one summer, I remove the 

 strongest of them, and transplant them into beds, or lines about a 

 foot apart. Plants of equal strength commonly flower at the same 

 time, and appear last; any time between September and April 

 admits of their removal, but if the plants are strong enough to 

 flower the first summer, they should be removed before the month 

 of March. Those that remain in the seed-bed are fit for being 

 transplanted after the second summer's growth, when they are 

 classed into sizes in being removed. Such as are thinned out and left 

 at distances for flowering in the seed beds, are very seldom found to 

 be so vigorous as those that are early removed. After the plants 

 are three years old, they do not admit of being transplanted with 

 much success. I have known old plants which, after being removed, 

 would produce abundance of foliage, but not one flower in ten 

 years. Such is the propensity of this beautiful plant. When culti- 

 vated as greenhouse plants, they should be inserted, when one year 

 old, into six or seven-inch pots, and kept very moist during the pro- 

 gress of the flower-stalk, which commonly begins and ends its height 

 in the month of April. The best specimens, however, are generally 

 from the open ground. 



DISBUDDING FRUIT TREES. 



JIN disbudding fruit trees it should be borne in mind that 

 every cut with the knife, and every pinch of the finger 

 and thumb, technically termed "stopping," exercises, 

 for a time at least, a corresponding amount of restric- 

 tion on the root. Indeed, it would be no difficult 

 matter to convert a young forest tree into a mere bush by com- 

 mencing and rigidly pursuing such a course for the first seven years 

 of its life. One of the first points to appreciate, with regard more 

 especially to trained trees, whether by the fan mode or horizon- 

 tally, is the continual tendency of the main leaders of such trees to 

 establish a new leader in the most perpendicular direction, or where 

 the most spacious sap vessels exist. This is of course a mere con- 

 sequence of an immutable law of nature, which in the main impels 

 the shoots of trees upwards. Now it is perfectly obvious that when 

 the main flow of sap obtains a new channel of this description, 

 that such must be at the expense of the buds ; and more ^specially 

 the fruit situated near the terminal points of the horizontal or fan 

 branches. The winter Nclis Tear, and the Passe Colmar, are pretty 



June. 



