72 
THE PELARGONIUM. 
they grow the more will they 'droop. The con- 
sequence of all this will be, that strong 
bunches of bloom at the ends of all the 
branches will hang down completely below 
the foliage, and present the only pretty object 
that can be made of the Fuchsia Fulgens. A 
little practice will enable you to make the 
shape almost what you please, for all that you 
have to attend to is the fact, that wherever 
you stop the growth by pinching off the end, 
laterals will come out ; and that if you keep 
doing this too much you will have no bloom, 
because in each case you remove an end that 
is growing to maturity and bloom, and induce 
many new branches, which having all this 
growth to make, may not have time to do it. 
Another mode of growing these standards is, 
to retain the old stem, instead of making it 
grow from the bottom. We have seen a 
standard five feet long in the stem, and the 
under part of the large head completely hung 
with the scarlet tassel-like bunches, which dis- 
tinguish this plant from all others of the 
family. We have said nothing about the 
shifting from pot to pot, and the other ma- 
nagement of the plant in its progress, because 
we give Mr. Ford credit for having, in these 
particulars, given ample directions. 
FLOWERS NOT IN CHARACTER. 
As fruit trees do not adjust themselves to 
bearing until the root and the head have set- 
tled down into a sort of mutual agreement as 
to demand and supply, so also flowers never 
come to the proper characters until the root 
and the plant, after being disturbed in their 
proportions by removal, recover their relative 
positions. Hence, let us take a half-rooted 
off-set of an Auricula, throwing up a bloom, 
it will be found no more like the proper cha- 
racter than any other sort. Hence take the 
weakly struck cutting of a Pansy, and you 
will perhaps see a flower no more like the 
original than a cabbage is like a potato ; then 
take the premature blooms of the Dahlia, and 
you would not know what it was meant for, 
even if it condescended to come double at all, 
which is more than they will always. No 
matter by what the balance of power has been 
destroyed ; no matter what the flower is, the 
apologies for bloom are as surely out of cha- 
racter as the plant is out of order. When 
the Dahlia has exhausted itself by flowering, 
the blooms come out of character; when the 
Pansy is allowed to spread and grow in all 
directions, the flowers come out of character ; 
and if it were still longer allowed to transgress 
and grow neglected, it would degenerate down 
to the meanest of the small flowers. The 
Auricula sometimes throws up blooms in au- 
tumn; how rarely would they be known by 
their flowers ! And how happens all this ? 
The juices of a plant require elaborating as 
much and as perfectly to produce a flower 
in perfection as they do to produce fruit. 
The plant which bears our favourite Polyan- 
thus is as perfect as an oak, and has its wants, 
which must be supplied as surely as those of 
the " Hale Green Tree." Lessen the supply 
of moisture, and it droops; excite it too much, 
and it grows rapidly, and detracts from the 
bloom, if it does not actually blight it. But, 
the blooming of flowers out of character has 
led to many singular misunderstandings ; we 
have seen a Pansy returned " because it was 
wrong," when in fact it was precisely what 
was wanted. We hardly know a flower 
so ticklish in this particular as the Pansy; 
for, until it gains its full strength, it will 
keep coming wrong, or rather, it will con- 
tinue to bloom unlike its proper colour and 
character. In fact, but for some leading 
features, familiar to florists, always remaining 
visible, and it would be impossible to even 
guess what varieties they were. And it is 
perhaps one of the most curious of the facts 
connected with flowers out of character, that 
they do not even retain their form. The 
Pansy, Geranium, and Tulip, are all remark- 
able for this. Some Tulips, when nicely 
bloomed in fine colour, come with short cups, 
and generally what may be called fine form. 
Let these, from some unexplained cause, come 
more deeply coloured, that is, more of the 
breed or colour in them, and we find the cup 
longer, the petals more pointed, and perhaps 
even the flower itself foul. Let a Geranium 
get unhealthy or out of character, and we 
shall find narrow instead of broad petals, a 
long instead of a round flower, and half the 
colours wrong. So it is with a Pansy; a flower 
is long and crumpled instead of round, the 
under petal notched instead of smooth, the 
edges of the flower, all round, serrated in- 
stead of even ; and though there may be in all 
these som^peculiarities which betray them to 
the florist, who is familiar with every point, 
not one in a hundred would be able to tell 
what kinds they were. 
THE PELARGONIUM. 
The Pelargonium is one of the most uni- 
versally cultivated and admired green-house 
plants we possess in this country, and upon 
which so much has already been written, that 
an apology is almost necessary for writing 
more. These papers, however, are not ad- 
dressed to those who, having unlimited com- 
mand of means, can adopt all or any of the 
system recommended, but to those only who 
have to depend upon a frame and green-house 
for every operation ; but who, I believe, might 
grow the Pelargonium sufficiently well to com- 
