16 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



and Michaelmas Daisy are not convertible terms. For instance, 

 none of us would call A. alpinus (fig. 1, p. 7) and A. Thomsoni 

 Michaelmas Daisies, though both are very ornamental garden 

 plants. On the other hand, all Michaelmas Daisies are now in- 

 cluded in the genus Aster, except three or four good kinds which 

 belong to Boltonia. I will mention by name a few of the good 

 early Asters which are hardly Michaelmas Daisies, and should 

 not be selected to take part in an October display. A. imniceus 

 (fig. 2), a variable kind with large slate-coloured flowers, and 

 another white form, and A. pyrenceus, with large pale blue 

 flowers and rather ragged and distorted rays — a plant which has 

 narrowly missed being first-class — both of them come out before 

 the wealth of summer flowers is over, and would be more welcome 

 a month later than they are in August. Next there are the 

 doubtfully named varieties of the subgenus Galatella, one of 

 which, four or five feet high, commonly called Aster acris (fig. 3), 

 is an excellent border plant when well cultivated, but hardly late 

 enough to be a Michaelmas Daisy. Two dwarfs of the same 

 season deserve mention ; one of them, perhaps the nearest 

 approach to blue in this class, and named A. spectabilis, grows 

 about eighteen inches high, has an excellent free habit and a 

 good flower with a golden disc, but is generally over by the 

 middle of September. Another early dwarf of merit is A. 

 corymbosus (fig. 4), generally, but not always, with black wiry 

 stalks, much branched, and abounding with small white starry 

 flowers. These five which I have enumerated are all good 

 species and good border flowers, but generally too early to be 

 included in an October display. I have omitted to speak of 

 those which I have not found ornamental, whether early or late. 

 With the exception of A. acris, the other four names are well- 

 defined and undisputed. But when we come to the mass of 

 later-flowering Daisies it is difficult to define them either by 

 botanical name or by any other character. Name is no gua- 

 rantee of merit, because we find good and bad included in one 

 species ; it is no indication of time of flowering, because in 

 some— A. Novce-Anglicc, for instance — we have comparatively 

 early varieties, and others so late that in a backward season they 

 do not reach flowering at all in my garden. We cannot infer 

 height or habit from name, because in some, say in A. versicolor,. 

 botanists have set down to one species forms from six feet high 



