THE AURICULA. 



Ill 



''Pin-eyed" parents I do not consider a desirable venture, 

 though such flowers are often provokingly brilliant in other pro- 

 perties, notably in beautifully finished golden tubes. 



Young plants are the safest seed-bearers. It may be that, 

 from the very human desire to get as much as possible as soon 

 as possible, some large old specimen has been seeded and lost. 

 There was an old idea — and not dead yet— that to seed a valuable 

 plant was the death warrant for it. There is nothing in the idea 

 except that, if a large plant were used, the stout flower stem 

 would probably have too long a hold and pull upon the plant 

 through the summer, and it might die from syncope. 



At times I have been asked about failures in saving Auricula 

 seed ; and it is in part a mystery, in that some seasons will 

 prove bad seed years. Success, however, largely depends upon 

 early setting for seed — early, I mean, in the flower's life. The 

 stigma is most viscid and susceptible, and the pollen most fresh 

 and abundant, when the flower is but a half-open bud. I only 

 wait till then. 



Sometimes, after fertilisation, the young flower progresses no 

 further, as if conscious that its share in the great work of yield- 

 ing seed is done, and it is folded up. In other cases it will 

 expand, and last until the swelling seed vessel disconnects the 

 flower from its hold within the calyx, comically wearing the 

 displaced corolla on its head, like a hat very much to one 

 side. 



With exception of the selfs, the florist Auricula cannot be 

 said to seed freely. Generally only a few capsules will fill well, 

 and there is only one thin layer of angular seed in each, all else 

 inside the pod being but a placental core ; and though this is as 

 much a structural necessity as the obtrusive cone inside a wine 

 bottle, it conveys the same impression that the vessel holds more 

 than it really does. 



I would advocate a high degree of patience with seed lying 

 ungerminated in the seed pans. I have kept them three years, 

 and found seedlings still coming up. At whatever time seed is 

 sown, it will never all come up at once ; some will not be born 

 till many of their fellows have been bloomed and thrown away. 

 Moss threatens to be troublesome, and must be kept under — 

 better from the first — by clear lime-water. Sprinkling powdered 

 lime is not safe if there be much sand in the soil. I used it once, 



