fm 



T'7";-™''*'* ,f ^ ■vv'5' 



Fkbeuary 4, 1909. 



The Weekly Florists' Review. 



QARNATIONS I HAVE KNOWN 



AND THEIR ELEVATING INFLUENCE 



BY SARAH A. HILL 



I 



IROTHEB Toastmaster and Dear 

 Friends: — I have taken my pen 

 in hand to write you a few lines 

 because I can express what I 

 have in mind much better than 

 in attempting an after-dinner speech, for, 

 unlike the majority of my sex, I happen 

 not to be eloquent of tongue. 



I recognize many faces present as 

 those of old and tried friends, but if I 

 could for a moment see your signatures 

 I should know many more of you inti- 

 mately, for the written name at once 

 brings up a picture of your letters, and 

 I can say without boasting that few 

 women, the countrj'^ over, have as many 

 delightful gentleman correspondents as 

 yours truly. 



Now that the machine has taken the 

 place of the steel pen, I am seldom at a 

 loss to arrive at the meaning of my cor- 

 respondents, but there have been times 

 in the past when I hardly knew whether 

 I was deciphering an ardent declaration 

 of admiration, or only a very warm can- 

 cellation of an order for a belated lot of 

 the reigning novelty in carnations. 



La Purite and Its FoUowen. 



It is never safe for an unmarried 

 woman to let her memory reach too far 

 back into the past, but I can remember 

 wlien old La Purite was our mainstay; 

 I remember when Mile. Carle threw up 

 its first snow white flower and we held 

 our breath over its purity of color and 

 its clear-cut form, but even the most 

 daring catalogue liar could not claim 

 freedom of bloom for either of these 

 beautiful old pathfinders, nor for But- 

 tercup or Chester Pride, Portia or Grace 

 Wilder, which were added as the years 

 went by, and if there had been only 

 carnations on our benches I doubt if we 

 should have had butter on our bread, 

 for the bread-and-butter carnation had 

 as yet no existence. 



In '88, with Tidal Wave, the tide be- 

 gan to turn, and Father Dorner soon 

 after gave us a delightful set of seed- 

 lings and these, with Lizzie McGowan 

 and Daybreak, set an entirely new pace, 

 and a carnation, from being a spoiled 

 beauty for admiration only, began to be 

 questioned as to its right to occupy space 

 and as to its returns in hard dollars and 

 cents per square foot; the heavy boot of 

 sordid commercialism had kicked aside 

 the old-time beauties, and the husky 

 varieties with sleeves rolled up, stems 

 like steel, calyxes like gutta-percha, 

 petals like leather, and a noise like 

 money, came rustling on the stage — and 

 many a song and dance they have 

 given us. 



The Elevating: Influence. 



Visitors who go about a greenhouse 

 with the proprietor seldom fail to re- 

 mark upon the elevating influence of 

 flowers. I have never known a florist 

 yet who failed to acquiesce; he will 



[At the banquet given In honor of the Amer- 

 ican Carnation Society at Indianapolis January 

 2&, llie gem of the evening was the response 

 hy Miss mil. I 



stretch his neck in his collar, ele- 

 vate his shoulders, and really feel 

 higher up both mentally and morally as 

 the suggestion is once more made to him. 

 But I have seen the most enthusiastic 

 visitor put to flight from the most mag- 

 nificent carnation range by a very de- 

 pressed looking section hand who might 

 be scattering bone meal or other dainty 

 tidbit for Lady Carnation's mid-week 

 meal. And, further, I have known car- 

 nations that have dragged their owners 

 down very near to the bottomless pit, 

 and even the best of varieties at times 

 have tried the souls of their growers till 

 no modern tongue contained sufficiently 

 lurid language to express their feelings. 



That "Jubiny.'* 



I once made the acquaintance of a 

 glorious red carnation, sweet as winds 

 from Araby, a stem like whalebone, eight 

 and ten blooms to the plant, a blaze of 

 color, and every florist wanted it by the 

 500 or 1,000, but the rust "swept down 

 like the wolf on the fold" and de- 

 voured every green leaf, and I still have 

 the vision of our good German grower, 

 with wildly waving arms over his grass- 

 less benches, exclaiming: "That Jubilly, 

 he was the very teufel. " What else he 

 may have said when no ladies were pres- 

 ent I never dared inquire. 



A prominent firm in Massachusetts, 

 who had a nice order for "Jubilly" 

 placed with us, were extremely curious to 

 know why they were failing to receive 

 their cuttings, and made inquiry quite 

 forcibly weekly — and faintly each week 

 we replied. I am glad that I am ad- 

 dressing a company of florists, every one 

 of whom has disseminated, or has been 

 upon the point of disseminating, a new 

 carnation, for you know exactly what I 

 am talking about, and how often you 

 went into a perspiration before the sea- 

 son closed, and neither did you need a 

 rose temperature to make your pores 

 open. 



Turn About. 



Well, some four years after Jubilee 

 this same prominent Massachusetts firm 

 sent out a seedling, Mrs. Thomas E. L., 

 I believe. We gave it a good write-up 

 in our catalogue: "Size enormous, stems 

 stiff, free in growth, profuse in bloom, 

 of healthy constitution, never bursts its 

 calyx, everything has been claimed for it 

 and our opinion is that it will justify 

 the claim ! ' ' And it did, very nearly, 

 but I believe it was late in May before 

 our orders were filled, and so despicable 

 is feminine human nature that I con- 

 fess to pure enjoyment in going to our 

 file and copying verbatim several letters 

 addressed to us four years previously, 

 only substituting the name Mrs. Thomas 

 E. L. for Jubilee, asking why we were 

 not receiving those cuttings promised 

 us with such absolute certainty for early 

 delivery in the January past. And I 

 think that the secretary of the dissem- 

 inating company must have duplicated 

 our replies of even date, for I recognized 



the same tone of chastened humility that 

 had characterized our own. 



Mn. Nebon's Influence. 



I never felt my sympathies more deep- 

 ly stirred than in the case of a certain 

 magnificent pink variety, grown not a 

 thousand miles away from this city, 

 which seemed to have every necessary 

 qualification for success, but it later de- 

 veloped that the cuttings would not root. 

 Now, a JJerfect carnation, like the great 

 American mortgage lifter, must "Boot 

 hog, or die ! " We waited and waited 

 for those cuttings; so did the rest of 

 you; each time we were told that the 

 last batch had failed to root. Qne 

 grower was sure the plants were grown 

 too warm; another, that it was too miich 

 bottom heat in the propagating house; 

 a third, that they needed a Bordeaux 

 spray. A happy thought struck our firhi: 

 We would ask for unrooted cuttiujgs, 

 would take Ihem over to Eichmond and, 

 under our perfect conditions, we would 

 root them in three weeks and complete 

 our orders. Our disseminating friend 

 was very accommodating and sent us 

 baskets of the loveliest tips imaginable, 

 but with every appliance known to mod- 

 ern carnation culture, we failed to root 

 over ten per cent. 



It would not have been safe for you 

 to talk to the owner of "Mrs. Nelson that 

 year on the elevating influence of flowers. 

 Nothing short of diabolism itself could 

 have been more tantalizing than the 

 antics of that magnificent beauty. 



Hill's Hope vs. Lemon's Choice. 



Our firm has at different times tested 

 for their owners a number of aspirants 

 for favor, with varying success. It's a 

 risky thing to do; if they fail to make 

 good, the owner will always have a 

 doubt in his mind as to whether all the 

 conditions were just right to bring out 

 their good points, and the gentleman who 

 does the testing, and his grower, will 

 have arguments about wasted space — 

 and the nice discrimination needed in 

 endorsing a novelty. Less than a decade 

 ago, your toastmaster went down into 

 the east to take a last look at a fine 

 white seedling which we were to test, 

 and if satisfactory to help disseminate. 

 It showed up so fine down in its eastern 

 home that he could hardly wait to get 

 the stock planted on his own place. In 

 the meantime, our Mr. Lemon had gone 

 up into the northwest on a similar errand 

 with regard to a gorgeous pink. On his 

 return he gave the usual wheatfield de- 

 scription, "buds and blooms knocking 

 their heads together — and such heads — 

 on such stems ! " E, G. H. wanted a 

 south bench to test his white beauty and 

 F. H. L. insisted on a southern exposure 

 for his glorified pink. They each had 

 a 200-foot bench facing south in the 

 best 400-foot house on the place. 



When the date of the annual meeting 

 of this society came around, where the 

 white beauty and the glorified pink were 

 to take your breath away, E. G. H.'s 

 south bench was covered with a dense 

 growth of pale green carnation grass, 

 which would have required a scythe to 

 cut it, and not a flower in sight. F. H. 

 L. 's south bench looked like a patch of 

 seedling onions in very early spring, 

 with an occasional petal of pink thrown 

 in for cheer. The two gentlemen never 

 went together to inspect the two benches. 

 The senior member might be seen gazing 

 with a pained expression at Lemon's 

 choice, but carefully avoiding a glance 

 at his own eastern beauty; an hour later, 



