420 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
[November, 
White Flowers for Winter. 
Those of our readers who take care of a 
few flowers in the winter, and to whom the ap¬ 
pearance of a single bloom is an event 
of great interest, would be much sur¬ 
prised to visit a florist’s establishment, 
where the business is growing flowers 
for market. To look into houses, each 
a hundred feet long, and to see each 
filled, a long row on each side, with one 
kind of plant only, to be told that this 
brings so much a dozen, and that so 
much a hundred; to learn that as soon 
as the crop is cut off of one lot of 
plants, they will go to the rubbish heap 
to make room for another set, destroys 
all the poetry and sentiment connected 
with flowers. To the florist it is a 
question of so many dollars for such a 
number of square feet of glass, and the 
flowers are not grown because the 
grower loves them, but because they 
give him the wherewith to buy bread 
and butter, and shoes for his family. 
If one goes to a fashionable wedding, 
or an equally fashionable funeral, and 
sees in either case the elaborate deco¬ 
rations made up of solid flowers by the 
wheelbarrow-load, if not the cart-load, 
and costing hundreds, and sometimes 
thousands of dollars, he wonders where 
all these flowers, and so many of one 
kind, could have come from. It would 
take a long journey around the suburbs 
of New York, or other city, to find the 
factories, for such they really are, where 
these plants are made. It is often the 
case that small establishments grow 
but three or four—and sometimes only 
one thing, and the decorative florists— 
“ bouquetists” they call themselves in 
England—draw their materials from 
many different sources. In floral 
decorations, especially for weddings 
and funerals, the great majority of flowers must 
be—for fashion has so ordered it—white, and 
to those who grow flowers, good whites, and a 
succession of them, are 
of great importance. 
Those who carefully ex¬ 
amine floral designs, 
will see that the ground¬ 
work is usually made of 
some very small white 
flowers, serving as a 
background for what¬ 
ever else may be added. 
Candytuft, Sweet Alys- 
sum, and such things 
are largely used, but 
these are not so effective 
as certain composites, 
such as the Eupatori- 
ums, Stevias, Piquerias, 
etc., of which immense 
quantities are con¬ 
sumed, and must be 
grown to meet the de¬ 
mand. The character 
of these flowers will be 
understood from the en¬ 
graving, which is that 
of an Eupatorium, own 
brother to the well- 
known Thoroughwort, 
or Boneset, which, 
though the flowers are similar in shape, 
have not the pure white of those of its 
cultivated relatives. The difficulty with the 
white flowers of this character generally culti¬ 
vated by florists has been, that they came in 
bloom just too early, or too late, to meet the 
WINTER-FLOWERING EUPATORIUM.—(if. triste.) 
great demand of the Christmas and New Year 
holidays, and it was difficult on the one hand 
to retard, and on the other to hurry up the 
a temporary BRIDGE.— (Seepage 119.) 
well known kinds. A few years ago Mr. 
Peter Henderson came across, in the hands of 
some florist of less enterprise, a white flower¬ 
ing plant, which just supplied the gap, and 
most accommodatingly came into flower just, 
at the time when it was most needed. The 
fact that it had no name did not pre¬ 
vent Mr. II. from seeing its merits, and 
securing it. The plant turns out to be 
a West Indian species of the Boneset 
genus, Eupatorium triste, and it bids 
fair to become the “ missing link ” be¬ 
tween the too early Stevias and too 
late Eupatoriums. The engraving 
gives a flower-cluster and the upper- 
leaves of about the natural size. 
Weigelas—Old and New. 
None of the flowering shrubs of re¬ 
cent introduction have proved more 
worthy of general cultivation, than the 
Weigelas. We use the term “recent ” 
in full knowledge of the fact that the 
plants were introduced a quarter of a 
century or so ago, but so slow are our 
people in learning what is good and 
desirable among trees and shrubs, that 
plants that have been in cultivation as 
long as the Weigelas, are still new to 
the great mass of the people, and it is 
for these that we write, and not for the 
very few to whom a plant that has 
been in cultivation for two or three 
years has already become old. We are 
well aware that the shrubs introduced 
as Weigelas have been found to be not 
sufficiently distinct from an older genus, 
Diervilla, and are now by botanists 
placed in that, and that they are pro¬ 
perly Diervillas, but having been intro¬ 
duced as Weigelas, and being still so 
called in nearly all the catalogues, it is 
expedient to keep that as the garden or 
common name. When first introduced 
we had only rosea (Diervilla Japonica 
of botanists) and amabalis , which, 
though differing in habit, is regarded as only 
a form of the other. Since then, so readily are 
the plants raised from seed, the number of va¬ 
rieties has increased, 
some of our nurseries 
offering as many as 20 
named sorts, and the 
European catalogues 
have still more. Some 
of these varieties are 
not very distinct, while 
others are well marked 
and desirable. The va¬ 
riety Deboisii is one of 
our favorites, the pro¬ 
fusion of its very dark- 
rose or crimson flowers 
being something won¬ 
derful ; another we 
highly prize is one call¬ 
ed Hortensis nivea, with 
flowers of a pure white, 
and remaining so; there 
are others, of which the 
flowers are white when 
they first open,but after¬ 
wards change to blush 
or rose color. This flow¬ 
ers profusely in spring, 
and then, provided the 
season is not, like the. 
last, too dry, it continues 
to bloom more or less through the season. In ex¬ 
amining the shrubs at the Centennial Exhibition* 
