SUBSTITUTION. 



A florist's view of the matter. 



HE EVIL oi substitution in the 

 plant trade is now a matter of 

 no small alarm to the people 

 who annually buy plants for 

 the decoration of their homes 

 and gardens. It has grown 

 so much that complaints are 

 heard from many sources. 

 That these complaints are justifiable in many cases, 

 that florists do sometimes substitute, and that mis- 

 takes' frequently do happen, goes without saying. 

 The sweeping charge of wholesale substitution and 

 gross neglect of buyers' interests made fre- 

 quently by amateurs against reputable 

 houses doing a retail plant business, is 

 not always correct in the main. If it were 

 possible for some member of an establish- 

 ment doing a retail catalogue plant busi- 

 ness to investigate in person the numerous 

 complaints made and claims demanded in 

 the course of a season's business, many of 

 the mountains of carelessness and dishon- 

 esty charged against reputable houses 

 would be reduced to mole-hills, and the 

 florists, as a class, would be found more 

 sinned against than sinning. The cause 

 of the dissatisfaction in many cases arises 

 from the want of the proper knowledge of 

 varieties of plants, or the lack of suitable 

 culti\'ation, or both causes combined. 



The writer has just returned from a trip 

 through a few of the southern states, having 

 visited several cities where flowers are grown 

 extensively, and shipments from nearly every 

 house in the United States doing a plant busi- 

 ness in the south are to be met with side by 

 side. It chanced to be during the period when 

 the chrysanthemums were in bloom, and the 

 ladies in each neighborhood held high carnival 

 among their favorite '"mums." The reputa- 

 tion for good or evil of every florist that offers 

 plants through his catalogues for sale in the 

 southern states is judged entirely by how near true to his 

 catalogue description his plants will produce blooms. 

 We found one woman glorying in the beauty of a large 



as it was unlike her neighbor's ; and they both came to 

 the conclusion that the Ohio house had substituted, that 

 Mrs. Vannaman filled the bill and Mrs. Carnegie was 

 not herself at all. She however, had written to the 

 florist about it and he promised to rectify /lis mistake' ! 

 In a small Georgia town we found a member of the 

 medical profession who had a local reputation for his 

 beautiful flowers and great knowledge of them. We 

 found him thoroughly disgusted, as he said he had been 

 victimised by a New York florist. He said he had spent 

 $20 the past year for chrysanthemums, and paid as 

 high as %\ each for many of them, none of which were 

 as represented. His Ada Spaulding, instead of being 



Thousand Sparks. (See page gS.) 



pink, was a dingy white, and of no account, his Nympha?a 

 did not smell worth a cent, his G. F. Moseman and 

 others that were to produce flowers eight inches in diame- 



specimen of Mrs. 'Vannaman sent her as Mrs. Carnegie ter, were barely three; his Mrs. Alpheus Hardy did not 



by an Indiana florist, while her neighbor was heaping materialize with the ostrich plumage, and complete dis- 



anathemas on the head of an Ohio house because she cord reigned among his tangled bed of "'mums." He 



ordered a Mrs. Carnegie and i;ot H, but was dissatisfied, led us half reluctantly to the rear of the liouse, where 



