THE ROSARIES. 



273 



shoot. It is usual to place these buds either on the dog rose or on the 

 mannetti stock. But the mannetti stock throws up suckers, which are 

 a great abomination, as they rob the choice rose, and appropriate all 

 the nourishment of the plant to themselves unless it is very carefully 

 looked after, and the suckers removed by the gardener. 



When we have obtained a hybrid perpetual plant, we have to decide 

 how we are to grow it. 



It is a common fashion to make a rose-tree look like a mop with the 

 handle stuck in the ground. This form the gardener calls a standard, 

 and he obtains it by working his rose on to a bare stick, about four feet 

 high, of the common dog rose. This 

 stick is rarely strong enough to sustain 

 the weight of the head, but requires an 

 iron staff, so that the mop head appears 

 to come out of two sticks. At the top 

 of this head branches of flowers arise. I 

 have always disliked this mode of cul- 

 ture, and the more I observe it the 

 greater this dislike becomes. I have 

 gradually succeeded in looking on this 

 unnatural mode of cultivation as a 

 horticultural mistake, and so whenever 

 my standards die I do not replace them. 

 I cultivate my- roses as pyramids from 

 four to six feet high, and three or four 

 feet "across. The appearance of the tree 

 here figured is surpassingly fine when 

 covered with its perfect blossoms, and 

 I think that no one who saw my 

 pyramids would ever think of growing 

 standards again. 



One of these pyramidal perpetual rose-trees, grown on the Croquet 

 ground (fig. 559), had at one time 144 blossoms open, and forty buds 

 nearly ready to expand, besides which fifty more roses had either 



T 



Fig. ssg. — Pyramid Rose-tree. 



