124 THE BOOK OF USEFUL PLANTS 



is one of the crops most benefited. Plants that 

 received the light from electric arc lamps half the 

 night are ready for market a week or two weeks 

 sooner than the normal crop. Gardeners that 

 make a specialty of forcing lettuce find that it 

 pays to use the light in their houses; the quicker 

 the heads mature, the higher their quality. 



ENDIVE 



When lettuces, languishing under the summer 

 heat, bolt to seed in the garden rows, instead of 

 making the fine heads we expect, we must be re- 

 signed, and turn our attention to the late-sown 

 endive for our autumn salads. So many people 

 do not know the plant, whose thick rosette of 

 narrow, frizzled leaves shade so beautifully from 

 dark green to the creamy-white centre. Tied 

 loosely at the top, for a week or ten days after it 

 reaches full growth, the plant blanches. Blanch- 

 ing modifies the tang of dandelion in the leaves; 

 as they whiten and acquire an extremely delicate 

 flavor. No salad is prettier in the bowl than 

 endive; and none is more wholesome as a food 

 and tonic combined. . 



It was the foreigners that put endive on the 

 benches of American greengrocer shops, and thus 



