ON ASTERS 15 



supported by late blooming. The Michaelmas Daisy 

 now ranks with the Dahlia and the Chrysanthemum as 

 an autumn flower of the first rank, and not a few 

 gardeners prefer it to either. 



Without making comparisons which might be painful 

 to the feelings of Dahlia and Chrysanthemum specialists, 

 we may throw into relief two of the merits of the 

 perennial Aster. 



In the first place, the genus is made up of a large 

 number of species and varieties varying greatly in 

 colour, height, and period of flowering. This means 

 that it provides us with material for our beds and 

 borders that we can utilise (a) for particular colour 

 effects, (b) in different parts of the borders, (c) for 

 blooming over a long period. Instead of planting a 

 dozen of one particular sort, and so having a block of 

 one colour at one place at one particular period, we 

 can plant several sorts, thus getting bloom in different 

 places and at different times. 



In the second place, they will grow in almost any soil 

 and situation. 



Students of hardy plants are fully alive to the import- 

 ance of the modern Michaelmas Daisy, and have set up 

 such a demand for it as to make it worth while for clever 

 cross-fertilisers to specialise it. This means that a con- 

 stant stream of new and improved varieties is flowing 

 into the nurseries, just as there is of new Roses, new 

 Chrysanthemums, new Carnations, new Dahlias, and new 

 Sweet Peas. The old school of flower gardeners have 

 no adequate conception of the modern Michaelmas 

 Daisy. They neither know what it is, nor what it is 

 capable of doing. Before me as I write is a clump of 

 the violet-coloured variety Framfieldi (a variety, I ought 

 to say, for the sake of botanical accuracy, of the old, 



