CHRYSANTHEMUM SPORTS. 



549 



that flowers so often fail to be produced in even very moderate 

 shade, coupled with the intensity of colours in high alpine 

 flowers, which enjoy a clear, uninterrupted atmosphere, we can 

 at once realise the importance of bright and prolonged sunlight. 

 It must be remembered, however, that light itself has little to do 

 with the actual making of the flowers. This depends entirely 

 on the foliage ; so that for fine flowers one must see that the 

 foliage can do its work to perfection ; especially that the surface 

 of the leaf is not begrimed with soot, &c, but well cleansed, if 

 necessary, with soap-and-water. Although we have no direct 

 control over climatal conditions, we can do what we like with 

 the soil. We can impoverish it or enrich it, or supply any 

 special ingredients we choose. Such undoubtedly affect the 

 colouring of flowers, and apparently the power of sporting as 

 well. To give one or two examples: — Mr. Hovey said,* that 

 striped Dahlias will be best kept clean by planting them in a poor 

 soil, while a rich soil invariably runs them. I believe this 

 treatment is well known to florists, and generally adopted for 

 other plants as well. As another result of impoverishment, Mr. 

 Lowe describes a number of sports of Chrysanthemum, as having 

 been, as he surmises, actually caused by it.t " Two years ago I 

 treated the plants badly ; they were never potted off, and took 

 care of themselves as best they could in an orchard ; they never 

 bloomed that year, and were all but killed. I cannot help 

 thinking that this has been the cause of many of the sports." 

 A hint from Mr. Burbidge + corroborates Mr. Hovey's remarks on 

 Dahlias, when writing about the fixation of sports : — " It is 

 advisable to grow cuttings of sports in such a way as to ensure 

 the full development of all the flower-buds they form . . . and 

 so prove them to the core, as sports often revert to the parent 

 type. Now to do this it is advisable to grow them in a poor 

 soil, without stopping . . . and to take care to give them no 

 more pot-room than is needful for fair growth, but at the same 

 time taking care- not to starve them out of constitution." I 

 find a corroboration of this in Sharrock's work, already referred 

 to. He says : — " Seeing it is evident that variety of colours 

 sometimes cometh from the weakness of the plant, some art 



* " Magazine of Horticulture " (quoted in Gard. Chron. 1842, p. 8). 

 f Gard. Chron. Jan. 5, 1878, p. 18. 

 X " The Chrysanthemum,'' p. 4G. 



