June, 1909 



THE CANADIAN H E T I C U L T U E I S T 



125 



Cyclamen for the Amateur's Greenhouse 



A. Alexander, Hamilton. 



CYCLAMEN Persicum giganteum 

 has been brought to such perfec- 

 tion in coloring and size of bloom, 

 of late years, that it is one of the 



and I am fonder of them than ever. I 

 will relate my experience of last year 

 with 100 seeds for which I paid one 

 dollar. It was said to have been saved 



Cyclamen Plants One Year from Seed 



Conservatory of Mr. A. Alexander, Hamilton 



most desirable flowering plants for 

 winter and spring use in the ama- 

 teur's greenhouse. I have grown the 

 cyclamen from seed for many years, 



from a very fine collection, and the re- 

 sult proved the claim. 



In the first week of February, 1908, 

 I sowed the one hundred seeds in a seed 



A Partial View of the Miller Greenhonte Disaiter in Toronto 



The accompanying illustration gives a slight idea of the wreck caused by the boiler explosion 

 at Miller & Sons, large commercial growers of flowers and plants, Toronto, recently. The pile of 

 bricks in the centre of the picture are from the wrecked chimney. The ends of two of the boilers 

 can be easily seen. The boiler that exploded was connected to the pipe that protrudes from the 

 ground in the lower right hand corner of the picture. The head of the boiler, weighing one ton, 

 was blown 1,000 feet away. The centre course of the boiler was blown 300 feet away. Another 

 part of the boiler was blown into the greenhouses, 60 feet away, and dropped on a spot where 

 one of the employees was standing only a minute previously. That no lives were lost is con- 

 sidered one of the extraordinary features of the accident. The illustration shown was loaned by 

 The Canadian Oasualty and Boiler Insurance Co., Toronto. 



pan, in soil from an ordinary compost 

 heap, where weeds and tree leaves and 

 the decayed stems of herbaceous per- 

 ennials and general garden rakings had 

 been accumulating for about two years. 

 With this soil, I mixed about one-third 

 of sharp sand. The seed was covered 

 very lightly, and the pan was plunged 

 in the sand of the propagating bed. At 

 the end of May, they were potted into 

 two and a half and three-inch pots. 



They stood on a shaded shelf of the 

 greenhouse until the middle of June, 

 when they were plunged in front of a 

 bed of tuberous-rooted begonias, shaded 

 by the over-hanging branches of an apple 

 tree, until the end of August, when they 

 were re-potted into four, five and six- 

 inch pots, according to their size and 

 vigor. They stood in a partially shaded 

 place out of doors until the middle of 

 September, when they were placed in the 

 greenhouse, where they began to bloom 

 about the middle of December. I should 

 say that they were potted in the "com- 

 post heap" soil with the addition of near- 



Cyclamen Two Years from Seed— 73 Blooms 



ly one-half of sifted old hotbed manure, 

 with careful drainage. 



Each of the fifty plants that I kept 

 had from six to fifteen blooms, and some 

 of them are still in bloom. The photo 

 of the young plants was taken in April 

 of this year." To give some idea of the 

 size of the blooms, I measured the lobes 

 of the corolla and found them to be two 

 and three-quarters Inches in length. 



Sometimes I keep two or three in a 

 growing condition for another year. One 

 of these is shown on this page. It had 

 seventy-three pure white blooms at the 

 end of March when it was photographed, 

 being then about twenty-eight months 

 from the time of sowing. 



I would recommend sowing the seed 

 two months earlier than I did last year ; 

 then, larger plants and more bloom 

 would be secured. I had every tint, from 

 the purest white to the deepest crimson. 

 I think that every seed must have ger- 

 minated. 



'A weed is a plant out of place. " 



