THE NARCISSUS. 



87 



and the Daffodils, do not bloom until the fifth year, and are not 

 at their best until a year or two afterwards. Mr. Wolley Dod 

 raised a batch of three or four hundred seedlings from " John 

 Horsfield," which he himself characterised (in the " Garden," 

 vol. xxxv., p. 277) as "mostly a disappointing and shabby lot 

 of mongrels." This fact, together with my own experience, 

 points to the employment of wild collected bulbs for seed-bearing 

 purposes as much as possible, and poor, sandy, or gravelly earth 

 suits them better than richly manured soils. Pollen may be 

 obtained from cultivated bulbs, and that of N. montanus, N. poeta- 

 rum, N. Tazetta, " States General," and some others, is generally 

 potent as used on the seed-bearing wild bulbs. It has been 

 observed by Mr. Ban* and other collectors of Narcissi abroad, 

 that they seldom produce " breeder bulbs " in a wild state, all 

 their energy being developed towards reproduction by means of 

 seeds. In our gardens generally, as we know, "breeder bulbs" 

 are the rule, and seeding is rather an exception. 



Culture. 



The culture of the above six species of Narcissi and of their 

 hybrids is very simple, and all are hardy on light, well-drained, and 

 not over-rich soils. N. triandrus and N. Bulbocodium are of all 

 those named the most delicate, but they do well year after year 

 on sunny borders near to warm walls. All the most delicate of 

 Narcissi, i.e., those accustomed to a hotter summer climate than 

 our own, do best on lean gravelly soils, and my own experience 

 goes to prove that crude manures either natural or artificial, are 

 eventually hurtful to all bulbous flowers whatever, and I have 

 lately heard of many failures in places where manured ground 

 had been employed for Narcissi, Snowdrops, and Crocus. If any 

 stimulant be used, let it be burnt earth and wood ashes mixed 

 with twice its bulk of road scrapings and fresh meadow or hill- 

 side earth, and applied as a top dressing, or at planting time. 

 It is a remarkable fact that the garden seedling and hybrid kinds 

 withstand the effects of manurial stimulants better than do the 

 collected wild species and varieties, which succeed best in lean 

 stony soils or grassy banks. We often kill off rare and delicate 

 bulbs, and also alpine plants, by too much kindness, when they 

 would live longer and succeed in all ways much better in 

 lean and hungry soils. The species of Crocus and Snowdrops 

 are extremely liable to disappear if planted in what we call well 



