FEBRUARY. 
35 
and autumn months have proved fine and genial, A dwarfer form of this 
strain has been termed the “ Dwarf Pyramidal Large-flowering,” evidently 
a “ selection ” from the foregoing. These are dwarfer and closer in hahit, 
very free-blooming, as is the taller-growing strain, and they do not embrace 
so great a variety of colours, though happily, at least at present, they appear 
to be composed mainly of decided colours. These representatives of the 
imported Ten-Week section deserve to be generally grown, for they are 
eminently useful for out-door decoration, but in hot w T eather they should 
be freely watered wdiere the soil is dry or gravelly. 
I have seen some marvellously fine things in Ten-Week Stocks of a 
taller growth than the foregoing, that have been denominated Giant Ten- 
Week, and well they have deserved -the appellation. They grow from 15 to 
18 inches high, and the leading spike of flowers is something wonderfully 
fine. They resulted from a selection out of some of the Continental Ten- 
Weeks ; the seed is now regularly ripened and harvested in England, and 
the per-centage of double flowers is fully equal to the German-grown 
kinds. They embrace three colours—scarlet, purple, and white, and are 
really of great use for exhibition, as well as decorative purposes. 
Another English strain, equally fine and valuable, is one styled Pyra¬ 
midal. They grow nearly as tall as the Giant Ten-Weeks, but branch 
more from the base of the plant upward. They thus form something of a 
pyramid in shape : hence their designation. I have inspected these for 
several years past, and have frequently recommended them to exhibitors of 
the Stock because of their special fitness for the exhibition table. Confined 
hitherto to only two colours—violet and scarlet, an accession has been 
received since last season in the form of a selection from the violet of an 
azure or pale blue, quite a gem in its way, if the colour of the original 
type can only be perpetuated, as no doubt it can be, as the other colours 
were originally selections, and have been transmitted from season to season 
with the hue of colour unaltered, and the quality of the plants unimpaired. 
The very best Intermediate Stocks I have ever seen were also from 
English strains. The old Scarlet variety, so pleasant to the eye in the spring 
and early summer months in Covent Garden Market, is now companioned 
by a white variety of good quality, but, from what I have seen, a little 
taller in growth. This may have been an accident of cultivation, and not 
a normal defect of the flower, if a defect it be. 
I saw last summer a selection from some German Dwarf Bouquet Stocks 
of a kind of Annual Intermediate, that, sown early in the spring and grown 
on in pots, would, I think, flower between the Intermediate and the Ten- 
'Week and Pyramidal varieties. The colour was bright crimson—a very 
desirable shade, the habit quite dwarf, and yet vigorous and free. When 
sown at the same time as the ordinary Ten-Week Stock, if flowers a little 
later, if subjected to the same treatment. 
Such weather as we have lately passed through—a kind of winter that 
had almost gone out of the remembrance of some of us, and had not 
entered into the experience of others—is almost enough to cause growers of 
the Stock to give up the cultivation of Capes, and Emperors, and Queens, 
and Bromptons—the kinds that flower early in the spring. What a general 
decimation of these there must have been ! There is such a difficulty expe¬ 
rienced in wintering them, even in mild seasons, that it does tend to curtail 
the area of their cultivation considerably. Still, some succeed remarkably 
well, notably, those who save seed, and those who supply Covent Garden 
Market with the cut flowers from the same. 
