94 PACIFIC STATES FLOKAL COXGBESS. 



This rogucing process is required to keep the strains pure and true 

 to name, but we do not always pull up and throw away the "sports." 

 Many of our best varieties of flowers were once a sport that was selected 

 and propagated, and it is only experience and observation that can 

 teach us which arc sports to be valued, and which to be discarded. Fre- 

 quently the selection made and saved so carefully will not come true 

 again, that is, it will not reproduce itself. One of the finest asters we 

 ever grew a large, bright crimson branching type never had a progeny 

 that was half its equal, and the product from the original broke into 

 a great variety of other reds and whites of inferior shapes and sizes, and 

 showed only a few that approached the original, while the subsequent 

 products of these were even less desirable, and the selection proved a 

 total failure, with its natural disappointment. 



The seed-grower must have every type of the true stock fixed in his 

 mind, and his own planting stock must be selected with great care. He* 

 should always select whole plants producing the greatest average of fine 

 blossoms, and not attempt to take a little seed from the pod of a single 

 flower. He must select and reselect over and over again, and should 

 not use stock for his crops that is not a selected strain, since the tendency 

 is so strong in flowers as in all plants to deteriorate. It is also a good 

 plan to save individual selections, that is, keep the seed of each plant 

 separate, though there be twenty plants selected of precisely the same 

 thing. This method secures a strain that Avill be superior, since some 

 plants are better reproducers than others, and the strain secured from a 

 plant that shows a uniformity of color, size, and vigor is much the 

 more desirable. 



If this system is carried out, it naturally means an endless detail to 

 a business. For instance, if one wishes to grow ten varieties of asters, 

 it is not a great assortment at all to have twenty colors of each variety, 

 and each color must be grown separately. It -would require, perhaps, 

 that twenty-five or thirty plants be selected for stock seed to get the 

 quantity of planting stock required, and these plants should be harvested 

 in separate packages and all put under one tag. A number of these 

 colors will show sports that are desirable, and these will want to be 

 saved and tried again, so that in a field of asters four or five hundred 

 stakes, and as many individual little packages of seed, is not a great 

 stock for a flower-seed grower here, and in Germany, where the greatest 

 flower-seed farms arc found, these individual selections probably run 

 into several thousands. 



Asters is simply one species ; all flowers require the same amount of 

 detail and consequent close attention. 



There has .always been considerable prejudice against California 

 flower seeds, some of which has disappeared, especially on certain things 



