LARKSPURS 
in consequence will have more vigour to put into offshoots from the base. 
As soon as the stems have died off in autumn the plants may be taken 
up, the offsets picked off, and the root divided. The offsets, if rooted, 
may be planted out permanently at once, or they may be put into pots 
until they are well furnished with roots. In autumn or spring cuttings 
may be taken from the new growths and struck singly in pots without 
any difficulty. They should be placed in a cold frame, and planted out 
when they show signs of being well established; they will flower in the 
following summer. 
The plants that figure in florists’ catalogues as named 
Hybridisation. _ , . . . * 
Delphiniums are mostly hybrids obtained by crossing the 
finest of the perennial species. Like Aquilegias, the Larkspurs take very 
kindly to this treatment, and the amateur gardener may be confidently 
invited to try his skill in this direction. There are, of course, certain 
rules to be observed, which we shall endeavour briefly to indicate. 
Already it has been made plain to the reader that the stamens and the 
pistil (including ovary and stigma) are the all-important organs of the 
flower; the stamens producing the fertilising pollen (male element) in 
their anthers, which is to be absorbed by the stigma and conducted to 
the seed-eggs (ovules) in the ovary or carpel. Now, for success in 
hybridising, one must be acquainted with the natural history of the 
species to be operated upon, for in some the pollen is shed before the 
stigma is ripe and receptive, in others these conditions are reversed. In 
Delphinium the anthers ripen successively and shed their pollen before 
the female organs are mature, so that the fertilisation of the ovules by ' 
pollen from the same flower is all but impossible. In this case, having 
selected a suitable plant for our purpose to act as seed-bearer, we must 
carefully cut out the anthers and wait until the stigmas erect themselves 
vertically. They are now ripe, and we must at once select the plant 
suitable for crossing, and from a. newly-opened flower delicately pick up 
some pollen by means of a camel-hair pencil, and as carefully and lightly 
deposit it upon the stigmas of the seed-bearer. The flower so operated 
upon should be at once covered with a bag of fine muslin to prevent 
the access of insects, who may carry pollen that would vitiate our 
experiment. 
In hybridising, some point should be kept in view 
other than the mere prospect of getting a strain different 
from those already existing. We should seek to improve the form we 
have selected as seed-bearer by crossing it with pollen from a plant with 
desirable qualities such as the seed-bearer does not possess, but which, to 
our fancy, would considerably improve it. If we aim at securing a 
