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THE FLORISTS MANUAL. 



no need of any charge for packing, and 

 if a man buys 100 geraniums of us in 

 the spring, we are pleased enough to 

 put them in a box and put a few slats 

 over them. We get the 4-inch pots 

 and that will about pay for packing. 

 We would have to cart them off some 

 where anyway. 



But when you sell lilies or azaleas 

 in full bloom, particularly the former, 

 you ought to get more for them, for 

 they take a lot of trouble and time 

 to pack properly. Perhaps we will 

 never make a specific charge for our 

 packing, but there should be an under 

 standing that to the man who sends his 

 wagon and carts them away a lily is 

 worth say 10 cents per bud and flower, 

 and when packed to travel forty miles 

 by rail it should be 12% cents per 

 bud and flower. That is what we do 

 every spring and it about pays for the 

 extra labor of packing, and other plants 



would get a severe black eye, figuratively 

 speaking. 



PALMS. 



These are our chief ornaments in 

 the conservatory of the wealthy, or the 

 room or veranda of the more humble 

 home. As fine ornamental plants they 

 stand preeminently at the head. For 

 many years they have been grown in 

 hothouses and conservatories, but it is 

 only within thirty years that they be 

 came the plant for the million. In 

 Europe hundreds of acres of glass are 

 devoted to their culture and a very 

 large area of glass in this country is 

 now occupied with the raising of hun 

 dreds of thousands of small palms for 

 the commercial trade. I am one who 

 has never seen the palms flourish in the 

 tropics, but I have seen many species 

 in the Botanic Garden of Kew, and 



Kentia Belmoreana. 



in proportion where much tying and 

 labor are needed. 



This question will of course always 

 be one to be decided by ourselves, and 

 without any agreement must be left, 

 like prices, to the discretion of the 

 seller. The man who today advertised 

 &quot;cases and packing charged at cost,&quot; 



other botanic gardens, where you have 

 to ascend a spiral staircase to get a 

 good view of these giants of the tropics. 

 Grand and noble they may be with 

 their gigantic leaves and plumed heads 

 towering up eighty or 100 feet high, and 

 novel and majestic they must first ap 

 pear to the traveler from the temperate 



zones, but they are associated with dark 

 skins, a hot climate, crocodiles and 

 poisonous insects, and the resident 

 Caucasian among them would doubtless 

 often sigh for his native maple, pine, 

 oak or hickory, or a handful of his child 

 hood s flowers, the primrose, heather, 

 goldenrod, or trillium. 



A palm of medium size, say a kentia 

 with a stem of three or four feet and 

 perfect leaves, or a latania with a 

 spread of ten feet and perfect, are much 

 handsomer to me than the large but 

 well kept specimens at Kew. Large 

 specimens of the cocoanut palm, Phoenix 

 dactylifera, Caryota urens, Latania Bor- 

 bonica. and others, we can remember 

 as long as we can tops and marbles, but 

 there are several of our most useful 

 palms that were not then introduced. 



As a small ornamental plant to adorn 

 the living-room, there is nothing, either 

 in beauty or hardiness, that compares 

 with the palm, and it is these qualities 

 that make it so universally popular, and 

 it is a popularity that there is not the 

 slightest fear will ever recede. Years 

 ago fine specimens were grown to be 

 looked at, admired and discussed, and 

 rarely seen in small, useful sizes. Now 

 they are used everywhere and on all 

 occasions. Besides the universal use of 

 them to adorn the lawn and veranda 

 in summer and the drawing-room and 

 parlor in winter, they are now seen at 

 every social function, marriages and 

 funerals, receptions, dances, orations 

 and commencements, store openings, dog 

 shows, and Midway plaisances; some of 

 the performances in the latter resorts 

 being peculiarly Oriental, the palm ia 

 a most appropriate adjunct to the trop 

 ical dance, etc. 



Palms are widely distributed over the 

 warmer parts of the globe, and the na 

 tives of these regions have found a use 

 for their fruit. The date palm 

 (Phoanix dactylifera) is the chief sus 

 tenance of millions. The milk and pulp 

 of the cocoanut are a leading article of 

 diet in all tropical countries. The leaves 

 are used as thatch to cover huts, and 

 the hard stem is utilized for building 

 and in many other ways. 



Many palms do well planted out in 

 the mild states of our country. We are 

 continually told by tourists of the fine 

 ehama?rops and braheas that are seen 

 in California, and that most splendid 

 palm, Latania Borbonica, thrives in the 

 Channel Island, where only a few de 

 grees of frost occur. It is this ability 

 to endure a low temperature (but only 

 a limited number will stand a frost) 

 that makes them of such great value 

 to us as decorative plants, and again, 

 being natives of some of the warmest 

 parts of the globe, palms like the kentia 

 will thrive under the great changes of 

 temperature that frequently occur in a 

 living-room, hot to suffocation if baby 

 is cold, and down to 40 degrees if John 

 lets the furnace get low. This is not 

 the way to grow them, but it is their 

 nature to survive these changes and 

 makes them our uneqnaled house plants. 



It would be quite interesting if some 

 statistician could trace the annual in 

 crease in the output of the palms for 



