112 Domestic Jfotices, 



Art. III. Domestic Notices. 



Crocus in Water. — Those who grow bulbs in glasses, forcing them 

 for winter cultivation, may produce a very pretty and varied succession 

 in the use of other roots than the hyacinths and narcissi. Soon as these 

 latter have past their flowering, (which will be about the middle of Jan- 

 uary to February with the single ones, and those put into the glasses the 

 fall previous,) the beautiful varieties of Crocus vei-nus may be sub- 

 stituted. The delicacy of foliage, the pure white sheathing envelope at 

 its base, and the exceedingly minute fibrous roots, together with the ele- 

 gance of the flower, renders it an agreeable change in winter flowering, 

 and a conspicuous ornament for the mantel. The writer having procur- 

 ed some roots as late as January 9th, planted most of them in earth, ex- 

 cept a fine large individual, which he placed in a bulb-glass, which had 

 been already used for a hyacinth. In twenty-eight days the one treated 

 with water had nearly filled the glass with its fibres, and produced its 

 first two golden flowers. The warmth of the room, sixty degrees Far- 

 enheit, expands them without the aid of the sun. The others have 

 scarcely emerged their " emerald beaks " from the soil. This striking 

 difference may prove a valuable hint to admirers of hardy and easily 

 forced bulbs, and perhaps prove a novelty in their cultivation. Besides, 

 the advantage which these little convenient bulbous roots possess over 

 most others, renders the experiment most successful. Scarcely any 

 other retains its power of developing its flowers after being kept in an 

 unvegetating state as does this. I presume that were they deposited in 

 a cool, dry, and perhaps dark situation, their time of flowering might 

 be retarded several months. This, however, would not be desirable, 

 as these daring and hardy harbingers of mild weather are among the 

 first gladsome blossoms that gild or empurple, with their blue or yellow 

 petals, the deserted walks of the garden, striving with the still earlier 

 Galanthus nivalis (snow-drop) to put on a smiling appearance amid 

 the keen winds and lingering snows of a tardy spring. — Philocrocist, 

 Feb. 9, 1837. 



Jistrapcc^a WallicKxi. — Among the many floral treasures that you have 

 noticed in the vicinity of Boston, I do not observe that you mention 

 the celebrated Astrapse'a Wallichii, which ought to be in every col- 

 lection that has any pretension to richness or beauty. Before me is an 

 umbel of flowers of this truly magnificent plant, of which I annex a 

 faint description, which may be gratifying to those who have never seen 

 it. The leaves of the plant are very large, roundish, heart-shaped, 

 from one to one and a half feet in diameter — flowers umbellate, of a 

 scarlet orange color, with five convolute petals about one and a half 

 inches long — stamens twenty-five, united into a tube, and protruding 

 a half an inch from the corolla, (belonging to Monadelphia dodecan- 

 dria:) fifty-six of these are inserted into an involucrum, and forms a 

 disk of from four to five inches in diameter, which hangs from the ex- 

 tremity of the shoot by a footstalk about fifteen inches in length; each 

 shoot will produce from one to five such umbels, according to the strength 

 of the plant. This is the third winter that it has blossomed here, and 

 has always attracted great attention. A plant of it only eighteen 

 months old, in the (present) very rare and select collection of J. B. 

 Smith, Esq., of this city, has forty-two such umbels of flowers in bloom 

 and about to open, and will be a jjicture for several weeks to come, — ex- 

 ceeding in beauty and splendor any thing of the kind I ever witnessed, 

 showing that a large plant, under good treatment, w ill be in flower the 

 whole winter season.— Fours, jR. B., Philadelphia, Feb. 6, 1837. 



