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March 5, 1908. 



The Weekly Florists' Review/ 



STIGMONOSE AND RUST. 



I enclose leaves of the carnations Pat- 

 ten, Peary, Joost and Harlowarden 

 which are diseased. What disease is it? 

 Can you give a remedy for it? Nearly 

 ^1 the plants are affected, some not as 

 badly as others. Will young stock prop- 

 agated from these plants also be affected, 

 if properly taken care of and grown 

 outdoors? They are from plants bought 

 last fall. Will there be any danger of 

 the disease spreading to our other car- 

 nations which are not affected, if planted 

 in the same field? B, S. 



The leaves you sent were so badly 

 dried up that it was almost impossible to 

 decide what the trouble is. In fact, they 

 looked more like old leaves from the bot- 

 tom of the plants, which would naturally 

 have been dead for want of air and light. 

 There seem to be, however, some stig- 

 monose spots on some of them, and also 

 some eruptions on the surfaces, like those 

 of rust before the spores have burst out 

 in powder form. 



If the plants are infested badly with 

 the stigmonose, which you can readily 

 detect by the light-colored spots inside 

 of the young foliage, you would better 

 not propagate from those plants that 

 show it. It will be sure to appear next 

 season, even though the young plants will 

 apparently outgrow it in the field. It 

 will not spread from one plant to another 

 unless the plant is very much weakened 

 or is punctured by insects, which makes 

 openings for the bacteria to enter the 

 leaves. The rust is not so serious and 

 can be more easily controlled. Keep the 

 foliage dry as much as possible and it 

 will remain practically inactive. Unless 

 the plants are badly affected" you need 

 not hesitate to propagate from them. But 

 take young shoots which «how none of 

 those brown eruptions. The rust will 

 spread if conditions a*te favorable to its 

 development. 



On Harlowarden and all crimson vari- 

 eties, and also on some red sorts, these 

 stigmonose spots turn dark as the leaves 

 mature. A. F. J. B. 



CELSIA ARCTURUS. 



The pretty, half hardy greenhouse 

 plant, Celsia Arcturus, is deserving the 

 attention of commercial growers. Two 

 exhibits of it before the Massachusetts 

 Horticultural Society January 25 at- 

 tracted much notice. The seeds from 

 which the plants exhibited were grown 

 were sown in heat in March and April 

 and grown on in a' cool house. The pan 

 illustrated contained three plants. Grown 

 in this way they are more effective than 

 if grown singly in pots. From seed sown 

 last February a batch of plants raised 

 here were in early June planted in the 

 flower garden. These flowered from Au- 

 gust until frost, but were not specially 

 attractive, the flowers not lasting as they 

 would have done during cooler weather. 

 The plants stood 20 degrees below freez- 

 ing without injury and should therefore 

 prove hardy in the southern states. 



The spikes of yellow flowers with pur- 

 ple stamens somewhat resemble the ver- 

 bascubis or mulleins. C. Arcturus at- 

 tains a height of eighteen inches and, as 

 it remains in bloom for months, should 

 prove a -very desirable addition to our 

 list of winter-blooming plants. 



Celsia Cretica, a tall growing variety 

 from Crete, is occasionally met with. It 

 attains a height of four to six feet and 

 is useful in the herbaceous border. It 



Celsia Arcturus. 



is a half hardy biennial and should be. 

 wintered in a coldframe. 



W. N. Craig. 



GERANIUMS DAMPING OFF. 



I am sending you specimens of young 

 geranium plants. Can you tell me the 

 cause of the condition they are in and a 

 preventive or cure ? I have thought that 

 perhaps they were grown too warm and 

 that putting them in a cooler house at 

 time of shifting from 2*4 -inch pots to 

 3-inch pots might have caused the trou- 

 ble. We had the young plants in a 

 house kept at 60 degrees at night, that 

 being the only place available for them. 

 They did well while there, but when we 

 shifted them, in the first part of January, 

 into a house kept at 50 degrees at night, 

 they did not start to grow for a long 

 time. In fact, they have just started 

 now. We used l)one meal in the soil. 

 Out of about 1,400 plants we will lose 

 about 200 from this cause. They\ are 

 full of small worms. Were they the 

 cause of the trouble or do you think they 

 were attracted there by decomiposition 

 already having set in? We used soil 

 from chrysanthemum benches for repot- 

 ting. R. M. & Co. 



You certainly made a serious mistake 

 in removing geraniums from a tempera- 

 ture of 60 degrees to one 10 degrees 



lower after repotting. A much better 

 plan would h^ve been to give them a 

 little more warmth after potting. It is 

 probable that you would have had no 

 trouble had you given your plants the 

 same temperature before and after shift- 

 ing them into larger pots. A little fine 

 bone is to be recommended for the final 

 potting in preference to animal manure. 

 The latter promotes leaf growth, the 

 former floriferousness. We do not know 

 what attracted the worms. You can eas- 

 ily clean them out by applying some lime 

 water, Too many growers still cling to 

 the idea that "any old soil" will grow 

 geraniums. There could be no greater 

 fallacy. Your old chrysanthemum soil 

 must have been largely exhausted and 

 you will have better success by using 

 some fresh pasture loam for any others 

 you may wish to pot. 



Another season, if you winter your 

 plants in a temperature of 45 to 50 de- 

 grees, keep a little warmer for a time 

 after repotting and allow the plants to 

 dry out well between waterings, you 

 should have no loss from damping off. 



C.W. 



Fairbury, III. — Kring Bros, have pur- 

 chased in Chicago the glass and some 

 other material for two new carnation 

 houses, each 30x130, one of which will 

 be built at once. The purchase included 

 a 115 horse-power boiler. 



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