General Notices. 561 



worthy of a place in the flower garden, on account of its pretty blue color. 

 The annual blue branching larkspur has eclipsed all my blue flowers this 

 season. I had a bed of it from two to four feet high. Last season I had it 

 in bloom up to November ; but the early frosts this season made an end of 

 them by the beginning of October. I cannot make out Avhy blue flowers 

 are so scarce. 



Many of your readers have doubtless experienced that in flower garden- 

 ing, variety with many ladies is esteemed as being especially charming ; so 

 much so, that with some, duplicate beds would be regarded as undesirable. 

 Where such is the case, it will be readily admitted that there is a diflficulty 

 in obtaining suitable counterparts to many things which are of themselves 

 inestimable, and being so cannot well be excluded from the parterre. Sup- 

 pose, for example, it is given to arrange a garden of any dimensions where 

 two beds of each color used is indispensable, yet no two beds of corres- 

 ponding colors shall be of the same variety, nor if possible of the same 

 genus : take, for instance, the case of tvi^o yellows being required, and 

 Calceolaria viscosissima adopted as one, what have we in point of habit 

 and color, apart from Calceolarias altogether, to match it? An equal, if not 

 a greater, difficulty obviously exists in the same way respecting many other 

 things, which I need not here enumerate. Would that some of your ex- 

 perienced and intelligent correspondents would direct their attention to this 

 point ! By so doing, they would confer a boon upon many whom the sub- 

 ject has much perplexed. In addition to the many excellent things which 

 have been already nominated in the Journal as being eminently qualified to 

 become the representatives of their respective colors in the parterre, allow 

 me to submit Anomatheca cruenta, [This is good,] which, for a small low 

 bed of a rtd color, if planted thick, is very gay and effective ; with me it is 

 in bloom from the end of May till the beginning of October. CEnothera 

 macrocarpa, for a low bed of a light yellow color, is to my mind far from 

 being without merit. Statice sinuata forms a very neat and effective bed, 

 and, in my estimation, as a bedding out-plant, is second to none of its 

 color. In recommending these, let me add frobatum est. — { Gar d. Jour., 

 1849, p. 708.) 



What is Ripening the Wood? — The question may be better put now than 

 at any other season, for now is the time when ripening must take place, if 

 at all. One would think that the question answered itself; but our corres- 

 pondence tells us that many persons have no distinct notion of what ripen- 

 ing is, or how it is to be accelerated, or how prevented. 



On previous occasions we have pointed out the unexpected fact that 

 many plants cease to be tender, that greenhouse shrubs may be frozen with 

 impunity, and that others will endure our winters with no risk, provided their 

 wood is ripe. We know that the winters of Persia are far more severe 

 than ours, and yet the vine and peach sustain no injury in Persia, because 

 in that country the wood is ripe ; the same plants are frequently killed in 

 England with half the amount of cold — here the wood is seldom ripe. 

 The most important, then, of all autumnal work is to look to the state of 

 the wood. 



VOL. XV. — NO. XII. 71 



