HOW TO SUCCEED 29 



thinned out gradually as the plants become crowded. 



Perennials, on the other hand, have spreading 

 root systems that, after the second year or so, are 

 more or less readily separated by either pulling or 

 cutting them apart; bulbs separate automatically. 

 The roots of perennials are sometimes a spreading 

 network of fibre; again the system is largely con- 

 centrated in a fleshy stock, a tuber, a rhizome or 

 a bulb. 



It is essential to learn these things, for the 

 reason that knowledge of plant life below ground, 

 as well as above, is no inconsiderable factor in 

 successful cultivation. 



Associate a plant with its class and characteris- 

 tics at the very outset. Do not be content with 

 half knowledge; you get nowhere with that. If 

 some one gives you a plant of purple German iris 

 that you had admired when it was in bloom, do not 

 begin by thinking of it as a lovely purple flower with 

 three petals curved upward and three in falls. 

 Think of it as a perennial ask if you are ig- 

 norant with, as you can see for yourself, roots 

 of a rhizomatous character. If you have not 

 learned that in nature such roots grow horizon- 

 tally and near the surface of the ground, some- 

 times showing a little above it, find that out, too, 

 by inquiry. 



Very soon the observation of these details and 

 their merger into a comprehensive whole becomes 

 second nature; you know a plant as an individual 

 without any more process of reasoning than when 



