]47 °"^ every single one of them is right 



spicuous successes is a little blue wild morning glory 

 which noimally begins to grow in early summer and can- 

 not be very exacting because it is found in a variety of 

 situations and, unlike many plants of this region, at alti- 

 tudes ranging all the way from fifteen hundred to five or 

 six thousand feet. Room temperature must have been ac- 

 ceptable and it is actually blooming in mid-December, thus 

 demonstrating that in another respect it is far from cranky. 



Quite recently experiments have demonstrated that 

 many plants will grow if temperature and moisture are 

 right but will stubbornly refuse to bloom unless they get 

 light for the correct number of hours per day — and that 

 means neither too many nor too few. This explains, as we 

 noted earlier, why some southern plants will seem to 

 flourish in northern greenhouses but refuse nevertheless 

 to bloom. Asters and chrysanthemums hold off blossoming 

 until late summer or fall no matter how soon they are 

 planted, because they want a rather short day and won't 

 flower even at the appropriate season if so much as an 

 electric bulb convinces them that long summer days are 

 still prevailing. My morning glory is getting fewer hours 

 of light than it would get in nature but it is obliging with 

 very pretty little blossoms nonetheless. Obviously not a 

 crank. 



My most conspicuous failures probably He among those 

 plants which are triggered by temperature. Perhaps if I 

 had thermostatically controlled heat they too could be per- 

 suaded that it was spring or summer as the case might be; 

 but I haven't. Often some other specific conditions can't 

 be met, as I am beginning to suspect must be the case 

 with an unusually handsome wild four o'clock which 



