200 POPULAR GARDEN FLOWERS 



The more thoughtful of the florists were not dis- 

 posed to put all the blame for the Hollyhock fungus 

 on the bloated capitalists who perversely insisted on 

 making railways ; they turned the searchlight on to 

 their own methods of culture, and were honest enough 

 to confess that they may have weakened the constitu- 

 tion of the plant, and thereby predisposed it to disease, 

 by propagating the plants from cuttings or grafts in 

 a high temperature. There may have been something 

 in this, although the fact that the disease attacks wild 

 plants shows that cultivation is not at the root of it. 

 However, the impulse to intensive propagation no longer 

 exists, as there is no particular demand for named 

 varieties, and consequently more subdued methods pre- 

 vail, such as division or seed-sowing. 



Most Hollyhock growers trust to seed nowadays, 

 and such of them as buy from seedsmen of standing 

 get a satisfactory percentage of good varieties, even 

 though all may not be doubles. Single Hollyhocks are 

 much inferior to doubles as show flowers, but not so 

 far behind in garden effect, so that a strain which 

 includes a small percentage of them need not be con- 

 demned. The seed can be sown outdoors in May or 

 June just the same as that of Canterbury Bells ; in fact, 

 the plants may be treated as biennials, being raised from 

 seed every year, bloomed the following year, and then 

 cleared away. But if a particularly good variety should 

 appear among the seedlings it should be preserved, and 

 it may be kept true by taking cuttings or practising 

 division. A simple plan of perpetuating a good sort 

 is to take pieces of the stool in late summer, pot them, 

 winter them in a frame, and plant them out in spring. 

 Or young shoots, three or four inches long, may be 

 taken from the stools when growth starts in spring, 



