1734 



STORAGE 



STRAWBERRY 



the car will hold, then close the doors, and, by lantern- 

 light, work goes on inside till all these packages are 

 placed, when more are handed in and the car quickly 

 filled. In this way a car an hour is often loaded all day 

 long in the Georgia peach orchard. Where small lots 

 are put in by many different growers and the car is 

 one or two days loading and opened many times, 

 the fruit is not so quickly cooled down and, even with 

 the same attention en route, never arrives in market in 

 as sound condition as when the car is quickly loaded. 

 Another very important point is the first re-icing. 

 When 400 to 700 warm packages of fruit are put into a 

 refrigerator car, ice begins to melt very rapidly and in 

 a few hours one-half or more of the ice has melted 

 away, the upper part of the car inside is a steaming 

 sweat-box, and it is of vital importance that ice-boxes 

 be promptly refilled solid to the top, so that the whole 

 inside of the car be brought to a low temperature as 

 quickly as possible. Once get all the heat out of the 

 fruit packages and the ice-boxes then full, and a car 

 may go a long time without re-icing and yet carry fruit 

 in good order. But neglect the first re-icing twelve to 

 fifteen hours, and there is always danger, while for 

 best service from start to finish the ice-boxes should be 

 kept full all the time. The most ice will be consumed 

 in fruit-loading and in the first twelve hours there- 

 after. 



When well re-iced en route refrigerator cars arrive at 

 destination with bunkers nearly full of ice, and in many 

 of the smaller markets, where a car-load of high-priced 

 fruit cannot be sold in a day, dealers often use the cars 

 for storage purposes, re-icing when necessary. Peaches 

 from Georgia handled in this way have been sold in the 

 smaller cities of New York and New England in per- 

 fectly sound condition ten days to two weeks after 

 being picked ripe from the trees. j. jj. HALE. 



8TORAX. See Styrax. 



STOKK'S BILL. Erodium and other members of the 

 Geranium family. 



STOVE PLANTS. The term "stove " applied to plants 

 undoubtedly originated from the method of heating the 

 structures in which plants were grown before the advent 

 of hot water and steam. Glasshouses such as then ex- 

 isted were heated by stoves and flues, usually made of 

 bricks. Such structures came to be called stovehouses 

 or stoves, and the plants grown in them "stove plants." 

 (A "greenhouse" was in those days an unheated glass- 

 house in which plants were merely kept alive over 

 winter.) These terms still exist in England, but are 

 applied to strictly tropical plants or those requiring a 

 warm temperature for their successful culture in glass- 

 houses. In this country such plants are spoken of 

 as warmhouse or tropical plants. 



In England, at the present time, more distinction is 

 made in the names applied to plant houses than in this 

 country. For instance, "greenhouse" in England now 

 means the coolest glasshouse only, while in this country 

 the name is usually indiscriminately applied to all glass- 

 houses. The names applied to plant houses in England 

 are therefore : Stove, for tropical plants ; intermediate 

 house, for plants hailing from warm-temperate climates; 

 greenhouse, for those plants requiring the least degree 

 of heat. A conservatory or show house is one in which 

 plants are placed while in flower and usually kept at a 

 cool temperature. 



In practice such terms may be greatly modified to 

 suit local conditions ; for example, at the Botanic Gar- 

 dens of Smith College, Northampton, Mass., the glass- 

 houses are named cool-temperate house, warm-temperate 

 house, tropical house, palm house, acacia and succulent 

 house, experiment house and propagating house, the 

 temperatures and moisture conditions being regulated to 

 suit the requirements of each class of plants. 



The cultivation of stove plants is too heterogeneous 

 a subject to be treated exhaustively in a single book, 

 because the stove contains thousands of dissimilar 

 plant treasures from the tropics, especially those found 

 at low altitudes. In general, the stove is the house 

 which requires the most expense and care, the greatest 



heat and the highest atmospheric moisture. For the 

 general principles of its management, consult Green- 

 house Management. EDWARD J. CANNING. 



ST. PETER'S-WORT. Ascyrum stems. 



ST. PETER'S WREATH. Spinvu, Jnj per id folia. 



STRATIOTES (Greek, soldier; referring to the 

 sword-shaped leaves). Hydrochariddcece. The WATER 

 SOLDIER, or WATER ALOE, is a hardy aquatic plant of 

 small ornamental value but considerable botanical in- 

 terest. It is native to lakes and watery ditches through- 

 out Europe, and has a rootstock creeping in the mud 

 which produces at the bottom of the water tufts of long, 

 narrow, sword-shaped Ivs. bordered by small spiny 

 teeth somewhat after the fashion of Pandanus. The 

 fls. are small, white, 3-petaled, and borne on peduncles 

 which rise to a few inches above the water. The pe- 

 duncle is much thickened at the top and bears a spathe 

 of 2 bracts about an inch long. The male fls. are several 

 in a spathe, stalked, and have usually 12 or more sta- 

 mens. The female fls. are solitary and sessile in the 

 spathe. The plant has a distinct calyx, which is not 

 the rule among monocotyledons. Stratidtes aloides, 

 Linn., is the only species in the genus. It is some- 

 times called Crab's Claw or Freshwater Soldier. In 

 England the planting of this species is discouraged 

 from the fact that it spreads too rapidly. Technical 

 characters : peduncles rising from among the Ivs. to a 

 few inches above the water, much thickened at the top, 

 bearing a spathe of 2 bracts : ovary and stigmas nearly 

 as in Hydrocharis, but the fruit is ovoid and somewhat 

 succulent. It is offered by one American specialist in 

 aquatics. -^y jyj 



One of the peculiarities of Stratiotes is that in sum- 

 mer the whole plant rises, to a point near the surface 

 when it is only partly submerged, and later in the sea- 

 son it drops below the surface. Young plants do not 

 act thus. It is propagated by side shoots from the base 

 of the leaves. Toward fall and early winter these 

 shoots are merely bulblets and are readily detached 

 from the plant and are in a good condition for travel- 

 in S WM. THICKER. 



STRAWBERRY. Plate XXXVIII. The Strawberry is 

 an herbaceous perennial. It naturally propagates itself 

 by means of runners that form chiefly after the blooming 

 season. These runner plants, either transplanted or 

 allowed to remain where they form, will bear the follow- 

 ing year. Usually the plants will continue to bear for five 

 or six years, but the first and second crops are gener- 

 ally the best. It is therefore the custom to plow up 

 Strawberry beds after they have borne from one to three 

 crops. The better the land and the more intensive the 

 cultivation, the shorter the rotation. In market-garden- 

 ing areas and in some of the very best Strawberry re- 

 gions, the plants are allowed to fruit but once. The 

 plants therefore occupy the land only one year and the 

 crop works into schemes of short rotation cropping. 

 The Strawberry delights in a rich, rather moist soil and 

 a cool season. It can be grown in the cool part of the 

 year in the South and thereby becomes one of the most 

 cosmopolitan of fruits. The young plants may be sepa- 

 rated from the parent and put into new plantations in 

 August; but under average conditions in the North it 

 is usually better to wait until the following spring, 

 since the weather is likely to be too hot and dry in 

 the late summer or fall. Plants that have not borne 

 are best for setting. They are plants of the season: 

 that is, plants which start in the spring of 1901 are 

 fit for planting in the late summer or fall of 1901 or 

 in the spring of 1902. These plants have many long, 

 fresh, light-colored roots. Fig. 2414 shows such a plant, 

 with the roots trimmed for planting. Fig. 2415 shows a 

 plant that has borne. This plant bore fruit in 1900, 

 and has thrown up a new crown in 1901. The old dead 

 crown is seen on the right. The young growth is lateral 

 to this old crown. The roots are relatively few and 

 are hard and black. These plants sometimes make 

 good plantations under extra good care, but generally 



