154 
THE FLORIST AND POMOLOGIST. 
[ July, 
to form a pyramidal panicle, but they are mostly fertile and inconspicuous, with a 
few large, white, sterile or radiant flowers on the outer part of the panicle. H. 
pciniculata grandijlora differs in haying a much larger proportion of radiant flowers, 
the whole of the small, colourless, fertile flowers of the type becoming enlarged 
and converted into white petaloid blossoms, so that instead of bearing a sparse 
inflorescence, each branch produces a dense panicle of white flowers of about a 
foot in depth and 2 ft. in circumference. As a hardy, deciduous-flowering shrub 
blooming in August, this has few equals.—T. M. 
LARGE SMALL PLANTS FOR EXHIBITION. 
GREAT stir is made from time to time amongst exhibitors and non¬ 
exhibitors as to the sizes of the pots in which the plants of the future are 
to appear at our exhibitions. What does it all mean ? Do the men of little 
pluck and little brains expect to extinguish the enterprise and skill of 
existing exhibitors, and take their places by putting the large plants hors de 
combat ? Probably they may succeed in doing this, and produce as a result what 
our Societies would be sorry to see, a sort of flower-market on a small scale. It 
requires no great prevision to foretell that if our horticultural societies should, 
under pressure from the host of little growers, give undue prominence to little 
plants, the result would be little exhibitors, and little exhibitions. 
There is, I believe, an opinion abroad that there is more skill in producing 
a large plant in a little pot than in a large pot. This opinion appears to me 
fallacious. Granted there is more trouble and more labour, but I submit that 
the evidence of skill would consist rather in obtaining the desired end without 
unnecessary trouble and labour. 
A well-known writer some time ago took up the side of the little pots, and 
unfortunately, as I think, instances pot roses in support of his argument. He ad¬ 
vises the managers of shows to u do away with these enormous and over-grown 
things,” and asks, 44 which is preferable as an object of beauty, a pot rose in a 13-in. 
or 16-in. pot, with a whole forest of stakes to uphold it, and every bloom tied to its 
own particular stick, or a plant of the same variety in a 6-in. pot, with six or eight 
good blooms, and clean and healthy foliage ? ” The answer of nine out of ten 
persons, he assumes, would be 44 the latter, of course.” Now let me ask any candid 
and impartial reader, is this argument fair? Or even granting the writer’s premisses 
(which I do not), is it logical ? Why is the 44 clean and healthy foliage ” applied to 
the small pot plant only ? Is it a necessary condition of the small pot plant, and an 
impossible condition with the large pot plant ? Let the past answer. Again, 
is it necessary that a large rose should have u a whole forest of stakes to uphold 
it,” and can a small one 44 in a 6-in. pot with six or eight good blooms ” be con¬ 
veyed and exhibited without the same relative number of sticks ? 
What said the foreigners—French, Germans, Belgians, Russians—who came 
over to see our International Horticultural Exhibition ? They praised everything, but 
