1508 



RESURRECTION PLANTS 



plant could be grown ill a window-garden. For his spe- 

 cial purpose the writer has been accustomed to sow 

 seeds in Feb. in 4-inch pots, using a light, sandy soil, 

 in a house with a temp, of 60 F. As soon as the seed- 

 lings are large enough they are transplanted into other 

 4-inch pots, 3 plants to a pot. As to the vitality of the 

 seed the writer can only say that the seeds of Cruciferaj, 

 being mealy, not oily, "often retain their vitality for five 

 years or more. 



Selaginella lepidophylla is a perennial plant. It is 

 rarely cultivated in greenhouses for ornament, like the 

 evergreen kinds. It is chiefly cult, in botanic gardens 

 or by fanciers of ferns and selaginellas, as it is by no 

 means the most beautiful member of the genus. The 

 writer grew a plant of it for four years, and once saw 

 at one of the botanical gardens a plant which through 

 long cultivation had developed a stem almost a foot 

 high. It looked like a miniature tree-fern, except of 

 course that the fronds were arranged in a dense rosette, 

 which gave the fronds a flat rather than a pendulous 

 appearance. Whether the plants received directly from 

 Texas have a crop of spores on them is a question. 

 The spores do not discharge when the plants are wetted. 

 Many extravagant statements are made about the 

 Bird's-nest Moss. The dried plants offered by the trade 

 will turn green and grow unless they are too old or 

 have been kept dry too long. They would probably not 

 grow if kept over more than one season. They cannot 

 be dried again and again indefinitely. 



If a plant has been grown in a pot for three or four years 

 and is then dried off it will die. Most people who grow 

 fiese plants as curiosities place them in a bowl of water 

 with perhaps a little sand and a 

 few pebbles. The water causes 

 them to turn green and they 

 will grow for a time. Then if 

 taken out of the water they may 

 be kept dry for a time and the 

 process repeated, but each time 

 the plant loses its lower or outer 

 circles of fronds much faster 

 than new ones are made and at 

 about the third time the plant 

 is used up. 



The writer has a fern which 

 could just as truly be called a 

 Resurrection Plant. The fern 

 is Polypodlum incanum. It is 

 a native of the southern states, 

 where it grows up the trunks of 

 trees and over rocks and stones. 

 At certain times it is dried up 

 3093. Another " Rose of and parched, but as soon as 

 Jericho" Asteriscus. moisture conditions are restored 

 rm. j. n , it looks as fresh as ever. The 



make a flat, sUr^aped P' ants are F Owin ^ On the branch 



figure. of a tree in a coolhouse and it 



has been tested several times. 



It seems that Selaginella lepidophylla is a little outside 

 the region in which Selaginellas are most at home and that 

 it has learned to adapt itself to different conditions. In 

 warm, dry countries there are ferns of various genera 

 that dry up and then are resurrected quickly when wet 

 weather comes. EDWARD J. CANNING. 



RETARDING is the opposite of forcing, and consists 

 in keeping plants in cold storage, thereby preventing 

 them from growing during their natural season. Its 

 object is to supplement natural methods and forcing in 

 order to produce the same thing the year round. At 

 present the lily-of-the-valley is the only plant of the 

 first importance which is retarded in commercial estab- 

 lishments. There is sufficient demand for these flowers 

 all the year round to justify the expense of cold storage. 

 Lily-of-the-valley "pips "maybe taken from cold storage 

 and forced into bloom in three weeks. Plants that have 

 been retarded need very little heat when they are al- 

 lowed to^grow; they are eager to start, and a temp, of 

 45 to 50 is sufficient. Lilium speciosum, longiflorum 

 and auratum will bloom in 10-12 weeks from cold 

 storage; Azalea, mollis in 3-4 weeks; spireas in about 

 5 weeks. Seakale and lilacs have also been retarded 

 with profit. Goidenrod has been kept in an ice-house 



RETINISPORA 



all summer and flowered for Christmas with happy re- 

 sults. The art of retarding plants is making great prog- 

 ress at present, and with the growth of popular taste 

 for flowers the list of retarded plants may be greatly 

 extended in the future. See A.F. 16:654, 655 (1900). 



KETINf SPORA. Often but not originally spelled liet- 

 inospora. A genus of conifers founded originally by 

 Siebold and Zuccarini on the two Japanese species of 

 Chamsecyparis, chiefly distinguished from the Ameri- 

 can species by the resinous canals of the seeds (from 

 Greek refine, resin, and spora, seed). Afterwards the 

 genus was united with Chamsecyparis, but in horticul- 

 tural nomenclature the name is applied to a number of 

 juvenile forms of Thuya and Chamaecyparis chiefly in- 

 troduced from Japan. As these juvenile forms all resem- 

 ble each other very much, indeed much more than they 

 do the typical forms to which they belong, it is not 

 strange that they should have been considered to be dis- 

 tinct species and even to belong to a separate genus. 

 Even botanists failed to recognize the true relation of 

 these forms and went as far as to place one of them in 

 the genus Juniperus. With the exception of Itetinispora 

 ericoides, which C. Koch recognized as the juvenile form 

 of Thuya occidentalis, the origin of these juvenile forms 

 remained doubtful until L. Beissner, after having care- 

 fully studied the subject for years, disclosed the rela- 

 tionship of the various forms. He showed by experi- 

 ment that it is possible to raise the same form by making 

 cuttings from seedlings which have still retained their 

 primordial foliage, and he also published cases in 

 which larger plants of these doubtful forms had been 

 observed accidentally to develop branches with the foli- 

 age of the typical form. See, also, Gt. 1879, pp. 109 and 

 172; 1881, pp. 210 and 299, and 1882, p. 152. 



There are 4 of these juvenile forms generally in culti- 

 vation, each of them with an intermediate form showing 

 either a kind of foliage approaching that of the type or 

 two different kinds of foliage on the same plant. There 

 seems to be no doubt that all these forms have been se- 

 cured by propagating branches of young seedling plants. 

 All seedlings of Chamsecyparis, Thuya and other genera 

 of the Cupressinere produce in their juvenile state a kind 

 of primordial foliage very different in appearance from 

 that of the adult plants. The first leaves are always lin- 

 ear and spreading, passing gradually into acicular and 

 at last scale-like leaves. In some plants, especially if 

 they have not sufficient nourishment, the primordial 

 foliage is retained longer than usual and these have 

 probably been selected for perpetuating the juvenile 

 state, by means of cuttings. By continuing through 

 many generations the propagation of those branches 

 which show the juvenile state most distinctly, these 

 forms have become well-fixed varieties and even some- 

 times bear seeds without changing the foliage on the 

 fruiting branches. These seeds, however, produce 

 plants of the typical form and only a few of them retain 

 the primordial foliage somewhat longer than usual. 



The juvenile forms very much resemble some species 

 of Juniperus in habit and foliage. They bear linear 

 spreading leaves in pairs, changing in winter to a 

 brown, reddish, violet or steel color, and do not show 

 the regular frond-like branching of the typical forms. 

 The leaves, however, are much softer and not sharply 

 and acutely pointed as in Juniperus; they are mostly 

 marked with whitish or grayish green lines beneath, 

 which is never the case in Juniperus. Only Thuya 

 orientalis, var. decussata and sorue intermediate forms, 

 with acicular suberect leaves, show whitish marks on 

 the upper side of the leaves like Juniperus. 



Though these Retinispora-forms are described under 

 the genera and species to which they belong, where also 

 references to illustrations are cited, descriptions may 

 be given here to afford a closer comparison of these 

 similar and much confounded forms. The two forms of 

 foliage in the common red cedar are well shown in Fig. 

 1203. Vol. II. For other pictures of Retinispora form- 

 see Chamcecyparis and Thuya. 



Chamaecyparis pisifera, var. squarrdsa, Beissn. & 

 Hochst. (Retinispora squarrdsa, Sieb. & Zucc.). Fig. 

 419. A dense, pyramidal or round-headed bush or some- 

 times small tree, with light bluish green foliage almost 

 silvery white when young, usually coloring violet in 



