A seed bed of sphagnum moss is free 

 from the damping off fungus 



This is all the growth the fringed gentian 

 mahes in the first six months 



The gentian seedlings (lower) growing 

 wild are much liKe heal-all (upper figure) 



All these gentians were successfully 

 grown and flowered in pots 



The Elusive Fringed Gentian a Garden Plant at Last! 



OUR LOVELIEST BLUE WILD FLOWER MAY NOW BE GROWN BY ANYBODY— THE MYSTERY OF ITS 

 "CHANGE OF HAUNTS" EXPLAINED— WHY WE NEVER FIND THE PLANT BEFORE IT FLOWERS 



On the principle that the most effective way to prevent the extermination of our choicest wild flowers is to get people to cultivate them, the publishers 

 of The Garden Magazine and " Country Life in America" have been trying for four years to find out how to grow the fringed gentian. We have 

 published defiant statements to the effect that no one has ever grown it, in the hope that someone could disprove it, but unfortunately no one has accepted 

 the challenge. We have dozens of letters from professionals and skilled amateurs who have tried it and faded. 



Fringed gentian seed (Gentiana crinita) has been offered in one of the 

 ultra-respectable seed catalogues for many years. We have bought it but 

 could never make it grow, nor have we ever had any better luck with seeds 

 collected to our order. 



Imagine our delight, therefore, when a reliable nurseryman offered last 

 year — not the seeds, but the actual young plants. 



Alas! these, too, failed to grow, not only for us but for all the other cus- 

 tomers of our nurseryman friend, greatly to his mortification. 



Meanwhile, in private correspondence and conversation, we had been 

 urging some of the best gardeners we know to take up the problem and "stay 

 by it" for years. At last Mr. Thomas Murray, gardener to Mr. Pierre Loril- 



lard, at Tuxedo, N. Y ., offered to under- 

 take the work. 



Two years slipped by. No word 

 passed between us and, to tell the honest 

 truth, we forgot that Mr. Murray had 

 promised. Picture our astonishment, 

 therefore, when he walked into our office 

 last September with two potted plants of 

 ■}■ gentians, each bearing eight or ten perfect 

 W o m $ *■ Jl flowers ! 



Mr. Murray saved the seeds until 

 spring and sowed them in a cold frame on a 

 bed of chopped sphagnum moss, thereby se- 

 curing a combination of constant moisture 

 and perfect drainage. The rest was easy. 

 The fringed gentian is not an annual. The books are wrong. It is a 

 biennial — or perhaps more exactly a "rosette" or "winter annual," i. e., the 

 seeds that ripened in the fall of 1 905 will only make a little rosette of leaves in 

 1906 and the plants will not bloom until 1907. 



now we understand 



1. Why the fringed gentian seems to "change its haunts" every year. 

 The pods are often frost-bitten before they get a chance to ripen seed. 



2. Why flowering plants moved to your home in the fall of I9°4 did not 

 bloom this year. They are dead. Their seedlings may bloom for you next 

 year. 



3. Why many people have failed. They have innocently slaughtered 



Sfeiae 



hundreds of gentian seedlings, thinking they were weeds. Don't rake your 

 gentian bed in spring. 



To be sure, we have since heard of other persons who have grown fringed 

 gentian from seed, and it is only natural that, in a case like this where 

 many people have been experimenting, more than one should approach 

 success. 



Among published records of the fact that this gentian has been raised 

 from seed is that of Mr. J. Ford Sempers, of Aiken, Md., whose statement 

 appears in the "American Botanist," for January and November, 1904, but 

 the cultural requirements are not given in detail. Plants of Mr. Sempers' 

 raising were received at the New York Botanical Garden, on March 16 

 and 29 of this year, and one of these en- 

 dured to flowering stage, where we saw it 

 in October. One other plant was living, but 

 the others had died. These were all still in 

 pots, and had not made any luxuriant 

 growth. The specimen that flowered was 

 six inches high, with two blooms. 



At the Buffalo Botanical Garden Prof. 

 J. F. Cowell has grown fringed gentians 

 at various times during the last half-dozen 

 years, and he informs us that he used 

 exactly the same material for the seed bed 

 — sphagnum moss — as Mr. Murray did. 

 He started them under glass and set out 

 a few specimens in the ordinary border. 



To both these gentlemen is due the credit of having attained results 

 independently of Mr. Murray, but to the latter remains the unquestionable 

 credit of having succeeded tn definitely demonstrating that the fringed 

 gentian can be grown in quantities as a garden plant. 



The recording of a discovery in such a way as to make it generally 

 available is at least half the battle, and it deserves some unusual recognition. 



We have therefore established "The Garden Magazine Achievement 

 Medal," which has been designed and executed by Tiffany & Co., and 

 hereby ask Mr. Murray to accept the first gold medal. 



This medal is not to be competed for. It will not be awarded except as 

 a permanent reminder of the world's gratitude for a genuine contribution 

 to horticultural progress. 



The Culture of Fringed Gentian 



By Thomas Murray 



MY FIRST attempt at growing the fringed 

 gentian was in 1901. The seeds were 

 gathered in 1900, cleaned, kept in an envel- 

 ope during the winter, and sowed along with 

 my other garden seeds in April. 



A garden -soil compost in a flat three inches 

 •deep was used as a seed bed. This was 

 placed in a coldframe and the watering and 

 ventilation carefully done, but never one 

 gentian appeared. 



The spot where the seed was gathered had 

 been marked, and in June a careful search 

 for a few self-sown plants was unsuccessful. 

 But when September came I picked the 

 blossoms. The fact was, I did not recognize 

 the seedlings in the early stage of growth. 



I did not gather any seed in the years 1901 

 and 1902, but contented myself with looking 

 for the plants in their native haunts. Each 

 season I found them in the same places, but 

 in varying quantity. The reason for this was 

 that the early frosts killed the flowers before 

 the seed was matured. It was not because 

 210 



the gentian had any tendency to change its 

 haunts. 



In November, 1903, I gathered a con- 

 siderable quantity of seed, stored it as before 

 in an envelope until April 1st, when it was 

 sowed in a compost of well-decomposed leaf 

 mold and fresh loam, as free from fungus as 

 I could get it from the field. The leaf mold 

 made the compost light, and I had, I thought, 

 a fine seed bed. I used a three-inch flat, well 

 drained of course, sowed the seed in rows one 

 inch apart, and covered as lightly as possible. 

 A good watering was then given, using a 



