As/cr Chinensis. 157 



these florets of the disk are changed by cultivation into flat pistiliferous 

 ray florets, they produce very little seed. Somttimes not a perfect seed 

 can be found in a full double flower: this is the reason why the seed is so 

 expensive. Our correspondents from Prussia write us this year, that asters 

 have earncdhwi a little seed this season ; meaning that the produce is small. 

 Perhaps I ought to explain to those who have but little botanical knowl- 

 edge, that the aster is called a compound-flower because it is an aggrega- 

 tion of many little flowers, or florets as they are styled, which compose the 

 head, or what is known as the flower. 



I will now proceed to describe the different classes of these improved 

 Callistcphiis, or Asters, as arranged by the Prussian and French florists. 



ist, Tniffaufs Pceony Perfection Aster. — Monsieur Truffaut, a celebrated 

 florist of Versailles, France, has made a speciality in perfecting the aster. 

 This variety has given him notoriety among the florists of Europe and 

 America. He has given to the amateur a flower representing the 

 greatest perfection in form, size, and fulness. It is of vigorous growth, 

 upright, bearing the flowers well, which are large, measuring four inches 

 across ; hemispherical in form, in consequence of the many layers of closely- 

 set petals, which are incurved, not shov/ing an open centre to the last stage 

 of its flowering. The plant is about two feet high, bearing about a dozen 

 flowers, which are so heavy when wet with rain, or in a high wind, that 

 they are prostrated : hence the necessity of supporting each plant with a 

 neat stick or rod. There are about twelve distinct colors, and combination 

 of colors, in this remarkable class; viz., crimson, crimson and white, light 

 violet, light violet and white, rose, rose and white, white, dark-blue violet, 

 dark blue and white, and white with crimson stripes. The same colors 

 prevail in about all the classes, with the addition of magenta-red, ash-color, 

 pale sulphur, and dark blue, or purple violet, and indigo blue. 



2d, New Improved Rose Aster. — This is a beautiful class. All the vari- 

 eties have the most brilliant colors. Its height is about two feet, producing 

 a branching head, displaying sometimes no less than fifty large double 

 flowers, the outer petals finely imbricated, and filled up to the centre when 

 quite open. The central flowers, of course, are the largest, often four inches 

 in diameter. This new class has the most valuable qualities of the pyrami- 

 dal section of asters, being intermjediate between the large-flowered Im- 



