JUNE 123 



This month is the time to sort out the Freesia bulbs 

 that have been drying in the sun, in their pots, laid on one 

 side on the shelf of the greenhouse. The largest bulbs 

 are re-potted now or in July in good strong loamy soU, but 

 hardly watered at all till they begin to show through the 

 earth. The next-sized bulbs are potted a month later. 

 When the quite small ones are put into a box to grow on 

 for next year they are too small to flower. Early potting- 

 up of Preesias is very important if they are to flower 

 early. 



June 20th. — For anyone with a small stove or warm 

 greenhouse I can thoroughly recommend the growing of 

 the Gloriosa superba or Creeping Lily. It is a lovely 

 and curious flower; it lasts very long in water, and 

 flowers continuously for two or three months. Its culti- 

 vation is simple enough : buy the bulbs in April, pot them 

 up in good LUy soil {see Johnson's 'Gardener's Dic- 

 tionary ' for this and all other greenhouse and stove 

 cultivation of plants), start them in heat, and grow them 

 up wires or thin branching sticks, or anything that gives 

 them support ; water them well while growing ; and as 

 they begin to go off after flowering, and the leaves turn 

 yellow, dry them gradually till they have quite died down. 

 Then lay the pots on their sides, and teep them quite 

 dry, but in a warm temperature, till you re-pot them the 

 following spring. The flowers are lovely — crimson and 

 yellow, with crinkled, turned-back petals, and they wedge 

 so well in small flat vases. 



In the last century the disciples of LinnaBus took great 

 pleasure botanicaUy in this plant, as the pistil bends at 

 nearly right angles in a most curious way, to insert its 

 stigma amongst the stamens ; and it is a good illustra- 

 tion of the sex of plants. It is figured in that old book 

 I alluded to in March of Erasmus Darwin's, called the 



