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8 



The Weekly Florists^ Review. 



Mauch 24, 1910. 



withstand drought well and are but 

 slightly affected by the heaviest rain 

 storms. The wonder is that they are not 

 more largely grown. One successful 

 grower of these, instead of pricking out 

 the thickly germinated seedlings singly, 

 transplants them in little patches, sepa- 

 rating these again as they get estab- 

 lished. The plants c&n be grown in pots 

 singly, or in flats and coldframes. When 

 in the latter, a little bottom heat is an 

 advantage. Seedlings which have been 

 recently transplanted will grow into fine, 

 salable plants before bedding-out time 

 arrives. 



Double Feverfew and Candytuft. 



Double feverfew and candytuft are 

 two important Memorial day crops 

 which should now receive some attention. 

 They may be cheap flowers, but there is 

 good money in them, and at the end of 

 May the grower who has an abundant 

 supply of them will never find any diffi- 

 culty in disposing of them. Each of 

 these plants likes cool, airy treatment. 

 Keep the surface soil frequently stirred, 

 and, as the plants get well established in 

 the beds or benches, give them a dress- 

 ing of pulverized sheep manure or some 

 suitable chemical fertilizer. 



Perennial Phlox. 



Where it is desired to increase the 

 stock of any perennial phlox, the time to 

 propagate is early spring. In order to 

 get a good batch of early cuttings, dig 



or carnations. Keep well watered and 

 few will fail to root. Pot off singly 

 when rooted, and any you do not dispose 

 of at bedding-out time can be planted 

 in nursery rows and will produce excel- 

 lent, heads of flowers in early fall. These 

 roots will be right for spring sales a year 

 later. Propagation by cuttings is a more 

 satisfactory method than dividing the 

 roots. Plants under the latter method 

 will grow and flower freely, but the 

 trusses lack the size of those grown from 

 soft cuttings. 



Lorraine Begonias. 



Plants of Lorraine begonia, partly cut 

 back after blooming and rested for a 

 time, are now producing a nice crop of 

 cuttings, which are being taken off and 

 placed in the sand bench every few days. 

 With a little bottom heat, these do not 

 take long to root. When potting off, use 

 flaky leaf-mold and sand as a compost 

 and stand them in a temperature of 60 

 degrees. The earliest cuttings are now 

 established in 2 14 -inch pots and will soon 

 stand a shift into a size larger. Keep 

 young plants quite close and moist until 

 well rooted; then air rather more freely. 

 Do not keep a lot ot old plants around 

 the benches after you have got what cut- 

 tings you need. They will only become 

 headquarters for mealy bug. 



Achimines. 



It is time to start the corms of 

 achimines. Not much grown in a com- 



E. H. Wilson. 



up a number of clumps from the field 

 and plant them in the bench of a cool 

 house. As soon as the cuttings are two 

 to three inches long, place them in a 

 propagating bench, as yon would mums 



many people imagine are a fair rejire- 

 sentation of achimines, which they are 

 not. Secure corms of the large flowered 

 sorts and, whether in pots, pans or haag. 

 ing baskets, they will be found decora- 

 tive and useful. Soil such as will grow 

 begonias and gloxinias suits achimines to 

 a nicety. Gesneras and tydaeas can be 

 started in much the same way as the 

 achimines. 



E. H. WILSON. 



mercial way, these are, nevertheless, 

 among the most easily grown, beautiful 

 and generally satisfactory of late sum- 

 mer blooming plants. There are a num- 

 ber of small, miserable varieties, which 



Ernest Henry Wilson, the noted plant 

 collector, whose name is now familiar to 

 horticulturists the world over, is an Eng. 

 lishman by birth, having first seen the 

 light at Birmingham, the busy capital 

 city of the Midlands. He was educated 

 at the local public schools, afterward 

 passing to the well-known technical school 

 there. He received his first horticultural 

 instruction at the Birmingham Botanical 

 Gardens as a student in botany in 1893. 

 From there he passed to the Eoyal Botan- 

 ical Gardens, Kew, in January, 1897. 

 While there he gained a scholarship in 

 honors in botany at the Eoyal College of 

 Science, South Kensington. 



He left Kew in September, 1898, and 

 on the recommendation of the director 

 was engaged by the noted firm of James 

 Veitch & Sons, of Chelsea, as a plant col- 

 lector in China. In the early part of 

 April, 1899, he sailed for China via the 

 United States, returning to England at 

 the end of April, 1902. The year 1899 

 was spent in traveling through Tongking 

 and southern China to the borders of 

 Burma; 1900 and 1901 were spent in ex- 

 ploring the then little known regions of 

 central China. The primary object of 

 the first journey was to secure that mag- 

 nificent flowering tree, Davidia invo- 

 lucrata. After an arduous search Mr. 

 Wilson was successful in sending seeds 

 of this to England. In addition he col- 

 lected a wealth of other trees, shrubs and 

 herbs. 



His second journey for Veitch & Sons, 

 lasting from January, 1903, to April, 

 1905, was to the extreme west of China, 

 the primary object being the introduc- 

 tion of the beautiful Meconopsis integri- 

 folia, illustration and description of 

 which have appeared in the Eeview. In 

 addition to discovering the meconopsis, 

 a host of other valuable plants were col- 

 lected, many of them now in commerce. 



The third journey, lasting from De- 

 cember, 1906, to May, 1909, was in the 

 interests of the Arnold Arboretum, 

 Jamaica Plain, Mass. The year 1907 was 

 spent in the mountains of central China, 

 and 1908 in the wild and practically un- 

 known region of the China-Thibetan bor- 

 derland. Hundreds of varieties of hith- 

 erto unknown trees, shrubs and climbers 

 were collected on this expedition. Collec- 

 tions of seedlings have been distributt d 

 to a large number of growers, both in 

 the United States and abroad, and while 

 all may not prove hardy in New Englarui 

 or the colder northern states, the va'^t 

 country south will undoubtedly find mary 

 of them valuable acquisitions. 



The net results of Mr. Wilson's severni 

 journeys are : The introduction into gar- 

 dens of over 1,500 new herbs, trees, 

 shrubs and climbers, and some 30,000 li'y 

 bulbs and about 65,000 dried specimens 

 of plants for herbarium purposes. He 

 starts April 2 on a fourth trip to Chinn, 

 on which he hopes to still further enriib 

 our flora. 



Mr. Wilson has recently been the recip- 

 ient of the gold medal of the Massachu- 

 setts Horticultural Society for his mag- 



