DECORATIVE VARIETIES. 
37 
no account should the operation take place at the same 
time that any repotting is done. There should be an 
interval of at least a week or ten days, either before or 
after the repotting, and then one may manipulate the 
plants with every prospect of success. When the new 
growths attain a length of six inches they in turn should 
be pinched in like manner, and the same rule regarding 
the withholding of water for a time, should be respected. 
Each succeeding six or eight inches of growth should be 
treated in a similar manner during the growing period, 
but there is a limit to the time when this may be done. 
For ordinary mid-season displays, pinching should be 
done for the last time during the closing days of June, 
but in the case of late-flowering varieties, especially when 
the flowers are wanted at Christmas time, this final pinch- 
ing should be deferred until three weeks later, namely, 
the third week in July. 
From the last pinching the plants should be grown on 
to the terminal buds, i.e., those buds marking the ter- 
mination of the plant’s growth. Should the grower pre- 
fer the plants to develop some twelve to eighteen, or 
rather more, really good flowers, he must not take up so 
many shoots from the different pinchings, and ultimately, 
when they are grown on to the terminal buds, one bud 
only should be left on each shoot. It will, therefore, be 
seen that from the last pinching some eighteen shoots, 
more or less, must be grown on. 
Cut=back Plants. — Cut-back plants are treated alto- 
gether differently to those that are pinched or stopped, 
and this method Is far more drastic than that of any other 
system. Cut-back plants are usually grown for grouping 
purposes, and this system is followed by those whose 
glass structures, in which the plants have to be housed, are 
somewhat low-pitched. The effect of cutting back a 
plant is seen in specimens of a dwarf character, but the 
operation should be done before the growths get hard 
through the sun’s ripening influence. 
