JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
442 
spring. A. chrysantha and A. Skinneri are not early enough to 
be injured much. 
My garden here in Cheshire is at present full of Columbines in 
flower or in bud, but to classify them according to their species 
would be a most difficult task. No doubt where they are mixed 
together in borders they hybridise readily, and few species retain 
all their proper characteristics. I am in the habit of brushing 
selected flowers with a camel’s-hair pencil and saving seed from 
these flowers. In some cases there seems to be evidence of a 
cross, but a very large proportion of the seedlings I set down as 
varieties of Aquilegia vulgaris, however much they may vary in 
colour. The best results are not obtained in the choicer but more 
exposed flower beds, but in shady and sheltered corners where 
the nameless remnants of beds of seedlings are planted at random ; 
but still they surpass their pedigree competitors in ornamental 
qualities. For instance, I noticed some to-day in the angle between 
a west and a north wall, flowering luxuriantly and quite unhurt 
by weather. These are mostly the broad-flowered single kinds, 
pure white, chocolate-coloured with white cup, rose-coloured, blue, 
and all intermediate colours. 
There is one Aquilegia which I can never raise from seed or 
keep alive if I buy the plant, and which I do not even know by 
sight—the true A. alpina. Nearly every other kind mentioned in 
nursery catalogues is represented more or less faithfully in my 
garden. My habit is to go round on a bright day to select fine 
flowers just as they open, to fertilise them with suitable pollen, 
and to mark those flowers with a bit of coloured worsted, and at 
the same time to mark for extermination as soon as their flowering 
is over all inferior plants. Some writers on flowers have gone so 
far as to say that all hybrid Columbines are a mistake. I am 
far from thinking so. If we can obtain the large clear-coloured 
flowers of A. glandulosa for instance, with the habit of A. vulgaris 
—and I have very nearly succeeded in doing this—it is a great 
acquisition to hardy flower gardening ; but whether artificial 
fertilisation is adopted or not, it must be owned that it is very 
difficult in a garden where many varieties of Columbine are culti¬ 
vated to keep any species pure.—C. Wolley Dod. 
FRUIT AND WOOD BUDS. 
I AM glad to see both 11 Single-handed " and Mr. Iggulden 
have noticed my remarks on this subject. The first asks “ if I am 
sure I know flower buds while dormant.” I am by no means 
sure that I do, for that is the very thing my original query had 
reference to, as by dormant I presume he means that state when 
to all outward appearance the fruit bud is a wood bud. I am not 
referring to Peach and Nectarine buds, which of course are easily 
distinguished, but chiefly to Plums, and in a lesser degree to 
Cherry, Apple, and Pear buds. 
What “Single-handed” says about the bark of young trees 
serving to a certain extent the function of leaves, would agree 
with my idea that the change from wood buds to fruit buds is 
under certain circumstances effected during winter and early 
spring. I have not the least hesitation in stating my positive 
conviction that not one of the young trees I have referred to would 
have shown even the most weakly flower bud, much less have set 
and swelled every blossom, as some of mine have done, had they 
been left in the open. I think I know a fruit bud as well as 
most people, for I have always made it a habit to study my trees 
closely, being perhaps too much given to counting my chickens 
before they were hatched, not only when they were buds but also 
when they were blossoms, and when they were fruit too ; and 
while I have often failed, having far less both of blossom and 
fruit than I expected, it has been very seldom indeed I have had 
more blossoms than I expected. 
Let me ask both Mr. Iggulden and “ Single-handed ” if in 
their experience they have met with anything like what I have 
recorded—two young Cherries grafted in April, 1881, to be studded 
with blossom in April, 1882 ; and though neither are now more 
than 2 feet high, to have well-set fruit on each. These were not 
large-branched grafted on strong stocks, with the blossoms and 
fruit formed on wood of more than a year’s growth. They were 
grafted on small stocks with a view to keeping them miniature 
trees, and the scion was the usual previous year’s growth. The 
blossoms are all on last year’s wood. The trees were potted as I 
have said in October last, and have since been in an unheated 
lean-to orchard house. 
The Prince Engelbert Plum referred to failed to show any 
blossom buds on the little short side spurs and branches, which I 
may say is the place they ordinarily appear first on a young tree. 
After all the older trees in the house had shed their petals and 
had mostly set their fruit, it suddenly produced at the top of the 
gross leading shoot a most abnormal set of flower clusters for 
[ June 1, 1882. 
about 5 inches, and not 9 as I said at first, down the stem and all 
round it. These flowers came out in clusters, exactly like a Pear 
cluster, at different distances up a central stem. Whether this 
may be a peculiarity in the fruit stalk of this Plum I do not know, 
as this is the first time I have had it or seen it; but it seemed to 
me almost as if it had intended to be a little side spur, and sud¬ 
denly changed its mind and produced a flower instead of what 
should have been a leaf. These flowers were very green, and I 
would have said very weakly. Certainly as they came out so late 
I never expected any of them to set, but they have done so with¬ 
out an exception, and the fruit is rapidly swelling, being now 
three-quarters of an inch long by three-eighths wide. It is the 
position in which these fruits have been formed that makes me 
incline to the opinion that the change from wood buds (which 
unquestionably these must have been in such a position in a young 
vigorous eighteen-months-old graft) to fruit buds must have taken 
place during winter, or more probably in this case in early spring. 
That this is possible is shown by what we have all observed—the 
occasional production of a few weakly blossoms by some trees 
long after the first bloom is over and the whole crop set. 
I have great faith in the value of root-pruning, having learned 
it, as well as many another wrinkle, from Mr. Rivers’ invaluable 
little books, which can hardly be too highly commended. But 
while I agree with Mr. Iggulden that the removal of my trees in 
autumn had an effect on them, it certainly is quite insufficient to 
account for what I have described, for I am positive no fruit or 
flower would have formed where they did, or on the trees they 
did form on, had they been in the open. My explanation is, the 
warmth of the roots in pots was so much greater than it would 
have been if in the ground, that that coupled with the mild 
climate of the house did it all. 
One other Plum grafted in 1881, potted and brought into the 
orchard house in October, produced one blossom which was too 
weak to set. I have a strong cordon Goliath Plum, which is the 
counterpart of Prince Engelbert in appearance, but one year older. 
In the autumn of 1880 I lifted it and planted on an east wall ; and 
though 1881 was such a wonderful year for blossoms owing to the 
fine summer and autumn of 1880, it had not one blossom. I 
root-pruned it in autumn last again, the leading shoot being 
allowed to grow unshortened just as Prince Engelbert. This year 
it produced blossoms and set its fruit well on several of the side 
spurs from the base about half way up, but not a trace of any¬ 
thing on the leader of last autumn. 
I have a young Zephirin Gregoire Pear two years old from the 
graft now forming flower clusters on the ends of two shoots from 
3 to 4 inches long, which till the last few days had no appearance 
of being any more than side branches : I mean that they were 
not spurs which have been overexcited. The shoots now con¬ 
verted into flower stems have come from wood formed last year 
just the same as in the case of the Plum. 
My letter is so loDg that I should conclude but that I wish to 
make one more remark on the effects of root-pruning or lifting 
fruit trees. My experience is certainly that the effect is mostly 
produced the second year after the lifting, though 1 have had it 
more than once in the following year ; but has anyone observed 
that by root-pruning, even when carefully done, you may convert 
fruit buds back again into wood buds ? In autumn last, and while 
the leaves were on them, I lifted two cordon Pears on Quince 
stocks three years from the graft. They had been root-pruned 
the year before, so that they were full of fruit buds. They were 
potted in 14-inch pots and brought into the orchard house, where 
they grew on without a leaf drooping or the slightest check, and 
yet only one of them produced a flower cluster, which did not set. 
The trees are in every respect most healthy. Now, I believe if 
they had not been removed every one of the buds would have 
produced flowers in the spring. 
A Margil Apple three years old, which in autumn was full of 
fruit buds, was root-pruned by putting a spade underneath and 
giving it a lift without taking it out of the ground, but only to 
disturb the roots. Many of the buds in consequence reverted to 
wood buds, I believe from their winter supply of nourishment 
being curtailed more than it ought to have been. So that it seems 
that root-pruning may be as efficacious to change fruit buds 
into wood buds as wood buds into fruit buds, and that during 
the winter season.— Irish Rector. 
Insects on Cucumbers. —Healthy growth and pure water are the 
best preventives of insects on Cucumbers. The true course is to 
follow the directions given on page 357 of No. 97. The time of water¬ 
ing is a moot point with gardeners. I will state my method, which is 
founded on much experience. It is never to apply water before 4 P.M. 
nor after 8 A.M., watering in very hot weather twice per day; but no 
rule can be laid down as to the number of waterings nor quantity of 
