CUT FLOWERS 131 



simple common sense you certainly can not. These 

 flowers and some others have a fast-flowing milky juice 

 that dries quickly and hardens over the cut as if it had 

 been pm-posely sealed with a waterproof coating of 

 india-rubber. Therefore, when I bunch up Oriental 

 Poppies, the moment before the bunch is put into its 

 deep pail, the ends are cut afresh, and the stalks are 

 also slit up two or three inches, and as the juice flows 

 out they are plunged into the water, which washes it 

 away. 



Lent Hellebores, whose white and dusky red flowers 

 are so precious in March and early April, live excel- 

 lently in water if their stalks are freshly cut and slit 

 up rather high. If this is not done they fade at once. 

 I had two letters one day in the end of March by the 

 same post — one from a flower customer in London 

 asking me not to send any more Lent Hellebores, as 

 they would not live ; the other from a friend to whom 

 I had sent some ten days before with instructions how 

 to keep them. This letter said that they were still 

 perfectly fresh, and that she saw no reason why they 

 should not go on for a fortnight. And yet I always 

 send a memorandum with the London flowers if any- 

 thing goes that needs special care ; but I suppose that 

 the many distractions of my always honoured but now 

 rather carefully avoided birthplace stand in the way 

 of the giving of attention to such small matters. Still 

 it may be that such a flower as this, which, by the 

 need of special care, shows its unwillingness to be 



