pentstemon Sensation ©loiinoifces 
HELENA RUTHERFURD ELY 
Every gardener rejoices upon finding a new plant that is simple 
of culture, is beautiful in form and color and has a prolonged period 
of bloom. 
Therefore, it was with great delight when, visiting a famous 
nursery about a year and a half ago, that I saw a large area of the 
Pentstemon Sensation Gloxinoides in bloom, producing a wonderful 
mass of color. 
The flower stalks of these plants are about 2 feet high; the 
gloxinia-like flowers are larger than the snap-dragon and form a spike 
from 8 to 1 2 inches long, in color ranging from white through the 
pinks to velvety maroon and bright scarlet, also from pale lavender to 
deep purple. The foliage is rather light green, clean and healthy, and 
the plants by mid-summer become over 1 8 inches in diameter. 
Burning with impatience to grow these new (at least to me) 
and lovely flowers, early in February I procured seeds from Dreer; 
they were sown at once in the hot-bed, transplanted when the little 
plants had four leaves into 4-inch pots, and by April again trans- 
planted to 6-inch pots. The 20th of May they were set out in a bed 
among the Picotee tulips that daily blushed a deeper hue, and before 
the tops of the tulips were cut the Pentstemon nearly covered the bed, 
and quite early in June began to send up sturdy flower stalks. 
Just at this time a fine professional gardener, a man educated 
in the great nurseries and upon estates in Germany, came to spend a 
day with me. Looking at the Pentstemon, he remarked what fine and 
healthy plants they were, and added that he had never been successful 
with them, because of a curious worm that appeared among the buds 
just as they were about to open and destroyed the flowers; he added 
that this wretched worm had resisted the attacks of all the insecticides 
he had used. 
Early the following morning the plants were sprayed with 
Bowker's pyrox, and the spraying repeated after three weeks. Whether 
because of the spraying or because this particular destroyer had not 
yet found his way to our distant country, the Pentstemons were free 
from all attack. They began to bloom about the middle of June and 
flowered abundantly until, the weather becoming cold, they were lifted 
on the 10th of November, the tops cut off, and they were planted in 
