LUTHER BURBANK 



ing it a good flower for cutting. A fault of many 

 of the annual varieties is that they have small, 

 weak stems. 



As to all of these matters, the amateur can work 

 by selection and by hybridizing. The wide range 

 of color variation affords a ready guide in hybrid- 

 izing experiments, and the ease and certainty with 

 which the plants can be grown from seed adds 

 greatly to their utility from the standpoint of the 

 amateur. 



SHOOTING STAR AND SALVIA 



A really fine plant that offers opportunity for 

 improvement, yet which has been little worked 

 with, is the Shooting Star, sometimes called Amer- 

 ican cowslip, a member of the primrose family, 

 classified under the genus Dodecatheon. 



There are sixteen or eighteen species described 

 in botanical literature, yet so great an authority 

 as Asa Gray thought that all the Dodecatheons in 

 the world should be classified as one species. 

 There are remarkable variations in size and color, 

 however, yet the varieties are sufficiently fixed to 

 offer good opportunity for experiment, and at the 

 same time are closely enough related to that they 

 may readily be crossed. 



The flowers of the various types show the wid- 

 est variation dark purple, crimson, rose, white, 

 spotted, cream color, and yellow. There is oppor- 



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