208 



JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 



[ September 7, 1876. 



Willermoz, Souvenir d'un Ami, Adam, Duchess of Edinburgh, 

 apparently a China Rose; Sombreuil, a wonderfully hardy 

 Rose — a China Rose, I think; and Madame Margottin, a citron 

 yellow. — W. F. Radclyffe, Okeford Fitzpaine. 



VINES LOSING THEIR LEAVES PREMATURELY. 



Three years ago I planted a house of young Vines, which 

 made satisfactory growth the first season, and the second year 

 the canes were exceedingly strong, leading me to expect cor- 

 respondingly large bunches; but in August, 1875, they cast 

 their main leaves, and the bunches this year while good are 

 not so large as I anticipated. This year the wood is very 

 strong and the foliage again shows signs of dropping. What 

 is the cause ? "Dryness at the root," says one visitor, but I 

 know that cannot be the case ; while another suggests that 

 the " glass may be at fault ;" and a third a " dry atmosphere " 

 is the cause of the grievance. Now I do not concur in any of 

 these solutions of the difficulty, but I attribute the defoliation to 

 the innate vigour of the Vines, and that the rapid swelling of 

 the canes is the cause of the leaves being pushed off. I am led 

 to this conclusion by the fact that the leaves on the moderate- 

 sized canes are green and healthy. I shall be glad to have 

 the opinions of other growers on this matter, as I fear there 

 is a tendency to err in inducing an excessive grossness of 

 growth in the anxiety to obtain gigantic bunches. I have 

 observed in the case of Vines of this character that when the 

 bunches have been of considerable size the berries have not 

 been correspondingly large and well-finished. My experience 

 leads me to prefer moderately strong wood which retains the 

 foliage until late in the autumn, when bold eyes are perfected 

 and good Grapes follow. It is seldom that well-cultivated 

 Vines in pots cast their foliage so soon as the stronger canes, 

 the roots producing which have the unrestricted freedom of a 

 rich border. — W. J. B. 



[The views of our correspondent are precisely in accord 

 with those of Mr. David Thomson, who, replying to the ques- 

 tion, " Why do young vigorous Vines frequently lose their main 

 leaves prematurely ?" writes as follows in " The Gardener :" — 



" This is an affection, or rather misfortune, which in the case 

 of young growing Vines perplexes and, to a certain extent, 

 alarms some growers, causing them to be apprehensive that 

 some disease has overtaken them. The occurrence is most 

 frequent in the second year's growth of young vigorous Vines ; 

 the more rapid and vigorous their growth the more leaves 

 they lose in this way. We were long puzzled as to the cause 

 of young Vines suddenly, and in the very zenith of their 

 growth, losing so many leaves, but are quite satisfied as to the 

 cause, which is purely mechanical. When such young Vines 

 are stopped, either before they get or just as they reach to the 

 top of the house, they then begin to thicken with great rapidity, 

 even to the rending of their bark in many cases, and their 

 circumference at the nodes, or the place where the base of the 

 large leaves is fixed to the stem, increases more rapidly than 

 the base of the leaf grows, and so the union of the leaf with 

 the stem is rent or ruptured, the sap into the leaf checked, 

 and the power of the sun acting on the leaf causes it to collapse 

 and wither, and it soon loses its hold of the stem altogether 

 and falls off, while the leaves on the lateral growth which 

 proceeds from their axil grow on fresh and green. This me- 

 chanical occurrence can be easily detected with a magnifier, 

 and is most conspicuous, of course, during bright weather. 

 The Vine no doubt suffers slightly from the loss, but not 

 materially."] 



Godetia Lady Albemarle. — When looking over Messrs. 

 Daniels Brothers' seed farm at Norwich I was highly pleased 

 by seeing their new Godetia Lady Albemarle, it was such a 

 glorious mass of rich shining colour. Since then it has been 

 exhibited in London, and has received a first-class certificate 

 from the Royal Horticultural Society ; but to see a few plants 

 or a boxful of it unexposed to the Bun gives little idea of its 

 splendour. Though it remains open night and day, to form 

 any notion of its effect it should be seen in a mass with the 

 sun shining on its large glossy flowers, few of which are less 

 than 3 inches across, and entirely different in effect to anything 

 usually seen in the open garden. The flowers are not unlike 

 those of Dipladenia crassinoda, with the rich crimson shade of 

 the newer varieties, but far exceeding these in the richest 

 silky appearance, and of so beautiful a colour, too, at a time 

 when many of the best annuals were burnt up with drought. 



Not one annual or bedding plant can compare with it in pro- 

 ducing such a mass of dwarf, dense, compact plants, the foliage 

 being entirely covered with flowers. — Thos. Stafford. 



THE "SLEEP OP PLANTS" AS AN AGENT IN 



SELF-FERTILISATION. 



At a recent meeting at the Academy of Natural Sciences of 

 Philadelphia Mr. Thomas Meehan said that what is popularly 

 known as the " sleep of plants," the closing of some kinds of 

 flowers at nightfall, though a matter within common observa- 

 tion, had not, so far as he was aware, been made a subject of 

 physiological investigation with the view of ascertaining the 

 value, if any, of this kind of motion in the economy of plant 

 life. He had recently discovered that by means of this peculiar 

 motion the common Claytonia virginica and some Buttercups 

 were fertilised by their own pollen. The fertilisation of these 

 plants had been somewhat of a mystery to him, as, in view of 

 some prevailing theories of cross-fertilisation by insect agency, 

 these plants ought not to be self -fertilisers, but from repeated 

 observation he was satisfied that no insects had visited plants 

 that had yet seeded abundantly. Watching the process of 

 fertilisation in Claytonia, he found the stamens on expanding 

 [ fell back on the petals expanded during daylight. At night, 

 when the flower closed, the petals drew the anthers up in close 

 I contact with the pistils. Cross-fertilisation could be accom- 

 | plished by insects if they visited the flower, but they did not ; 

 j and actual fertilisation only occurred in this way. In many 

 I cases, especially in the advance of the season, the stamens 

 I recurve so much as to be in a measure doubled-up by the 

 ' nocturnal motion of the petals. The anthers were not drawn 

 ! into contact with the stigmas in these cases, and the flowers 

 were barren as the result. 



In the Ranunculus bulbosus, our common Buttercup, in the 

 evening following the first day's expansion of the young flower, 

 the immature anthers and the young stigmas would be found 

 covered with pollen grains. The inference would generally be 

 that this had been carried there by insects. But as he had been 

 especially on the look-out for insects as visitors to the Butter- 

 cup, and feeling sure that none of any consequence had been 

 to them, he examined theBe flowers carefully, and found that 

 on the first expansion of the flower a single outer series of 

 stamens burst their anther cells simultaneously with the ex- 

 pansion of the flower, and, by contracting the cell walls, ejected 

 the pollen to the Bmooth petals, from which it easily fell to 

 the immature anthers and stigmas when the flower closed for 

 the night. 



Knowing that another species of Buttercup, the Ranunculus 

 abortivus, had fixed spreading petals which did not close at 

 night, and which, though with comparatively large nectarifer- 

 ous glands full of a liquid secretion, was wholly neglected by 

 insects, and yet had every flower seeding profusely, he was 

 anxious to find, in view of his other discoveries, how these 

 were fertilised. Visiting a wood after twilight to ascertain if 

 any nocturnal insects visited them, he found that though the 

 petals did not close at sundown, the slender pedicels drooped, 

 inverting the flower, and in this way the pollen found its way 

 from the petals to the stigmas, without any difficulty whatever. 

 Plants, of course, had peculiar functions to perform, and 

 there were pre-ordained plans and special arrangements through 

 which these functions are exercised. But the workings of 

 plant life are so complicated that, though we see certain results 

 follow certain movements, we are not always sure that we per- 

 ceive the great and deeper object aimed at in the order of 

 Nature : hence arose the differences of opinion prevailing in 

 regard to the object of cross-fertilisation. Some plants had 

 arrangements which seemed to preclude the possibility of self- 

 fertilisation, and the assumption followed that Nature abhorred 

 close breeding in plants, and specially designed such structures 

 to secure the plant against it. He believed that Nature had a 

 deeper purpose as yet unknown, and chiefly because of such 

 instances as he had given, where Nature could not abhor close, 

 breeding when the result of the " sleep of plants " was most 

 perfect in securing self-fertilisation. 



DIOSPYROS KAKI. 

 I can answer some of " G. S.'s " questions as to Diospyros 

 Kaki (page 193). We have a small compact plant in the 

 orchard house with ten fruit. The fruit was exhibited before 

 the Royal Horticultural Society's Fruit Committee from Sir 

 W. Hutt's garden, but I do not remember having tasted it. 



