the amateur’s flower garden. 
131 
few occasions, lost them wholly, so that in spring there were no 
plants to he found on the sites where they bloomed the pre¬ 
vious autumn. However, as hardy herbaceous plants, a few 
species are available, and G. cardinalis , bright red, G. insignis , 
orange red, and G. segetum , reddish purple, belong to this list, 
because they were fine handsome plants, and will live through 
the winter in any good well-drained border. 
The garden varieties of the gladiolus have within the past 
few years acquired immense popularity, the result in a great 
measure of the immense improvements that have been effected 
in the race by systematic cross breeding. We have now hun¬ 
dreds of named varieties, very many of them of stately habit 
and remarkably sumptuous in colouring. The soil in which 
