384 
HORTICULTURAL NOTES. 
beautiful plants, perfectly distinct from what 
we now possess. Skilful hybridizing can cer- 
tainly — if at least we are to judge of the 
future by the past — effect very much more 
than this. — M. 
Sparmannia afbicana. — This noble green- 
house shrub has a remarkable flower, the 
form of the bloom is unlike anything else, 
and is in every way as curious as it is beautiful. 
The plant attains the height of upward of six 
feet, which renders it too large for one half of our 
green-house establishments. It is a native, we 
believe, of the Cape ; at all events it was intro- 
duced from that place. It makes a fine con- 
servatory plant, and is desirable not less for 
its foliage than for its bloom, which latter comes 
in bunches on the young branches, with long 
stems, and standing well out from the leaves, 
and being white, with red stamens, which 
form as it were a red eye to each flower. 
When Curtis figured the plant in 1800 or 
1801, it had only bloomed at Kew, and at 
Whitley and Osborn's. It is about as tender 
as a geranium, grows freely from cuttings, and 
requires simply good draining, plenty of air, 
no frost, and freely watering when growing. 
Balsams. — There is little doubt but that 
Balsam seed is the better for keeping. It has 
been found, in general, that new seed brings 
single flowers, and old seed double ones ; but 
it is not quite clear that if half of the seed 
saved from any given flower were sown the 
next spring, and the other half saved three or 
four years before itwas sown, that the difference 
would be manifest. We should like to see this 
experiment tried. Divide Balsam seed of one 
kind, saved from one plant only, into five por- 
tions; sow one portion each year; make accurate 
notes of how many came double, semi-double, 
or single, and of their colours, &c. ; in short, 
take very accurate notes of their growth and 
condition. Do this the whole five years, and 
we should be able to appreciate the value of 
keeping seeds. One thing is pretty well known ; 
that is, that the plants from new seeds grow 
more vigorously than those from old ones, and 
generally bloom less. 
Double Flowers. — It is a curious fact 
that the botanists can never see any pheno- 
menon without accounting for it in some 
strange theory ; and yet, in most cases, the 
facts which they have not considered — per- 
haps not even noticed — pretty nearly always 
upset the theory founded on the facts they 
have observed. Flowers which sometimes 
come double, and sometimes single, give rise 
to a notion that stamens alter to petals, and 
even that one part of a flower alters to another 
part of a flower, and even that, under different 
circumstances, one part of a plant alters to 
another, as leaves to flowers, and so forth. 
But let us take the double wallflower — the 
ordinary one ; there is no alteration there. 
Year after year there are the double flowers, 
no changes whatever. Propagated by thou- 
sands, every plant yields the same kind of 
flower, which is a flat contradiction to the 
favourite theory. Stocks are much the same; 
but as they come double from seed, they are 
rarely if ever propagated from cuttings or 
slips, else the self-same flower comes double 
year after year ; no alteration takes place in 
the form or in the various parts. The organs 
of generation are always absent, and, like 
all perennials, the same distinct thing is pro- 
duced. If it be cut to atoms, and every atom 
makes a plant, they are all types of the ori- 
ginal. 
Potting. — When we buy plants, it is ne- 
cessary to turn the balls out of the pots, to 
examine the state they are in ; and if they are 
very hard — if they are, as is too frequently the 
case, a solid mass of matted fibre, they are 
ticklish subjects to treat. The best thing is 
to put the ball in water, there to soak for hour?; 
they will then easily shake out a little, and 
allow you to disengage the mass in some mea- 
sure, and repot in a large-sized pot; but if the 
hard ball be merely removed from one pot to 
another, it will remain in its hard state. The 
water given to it will never penetrate; the 
plant dwindles and dies. There is nothing 
worse to get over than a pot-bound plant; and 
unless the matted root is disengaged, and the 
spent soil that is among it is soaked or 
washed out, there is little or no chance of its 
ever succeeding. 
Prolonging the Blooming Season. — 
No plant can continue long in bloom if nature 
is permitted to do her work completely, for 
the going to seed exhausts the energies of any 
subject, and stops everything else. By con- 
stantly removing decaying flowers before a 
seed-pod can swell, the growth of the plant 
and the continued development of new buds 
and flowers upon the new growth, are matters 
of course. Try the experiment upon the 
China Rose. Two cottages having fine plants 
covering their fronts, being in the hands of 
two different persons, frequently exhibited the 
most striking contrast — one a mass of flowers, 
while the other was bare; and those who paid 
no attention to the cause, were, nevertheless, 
often surprised at the fact. Had they looked 
a little further into the matter, they would 
have observed that the one was loaded with 
the hips or seed-vessels, which were swelling 
in great numbers, while in the other not a 
solitary berry could be seen. In the one case 
every bloom was trimmed off as fast as it 
faded, in the other they took their chance. 
So it will be found in many other cases. It 
is only necessary to cut away the dead flowers, 
and the season of bloom will be prolonged. 
