Vol. XL. No. 1657 .} 
NEW YORK, OCT. 29 , 1881 . 
-[Entered accordlngtoActof Congress. In the year 1881, by the Rural New-Yorker, In the office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington 
/PRICE FIVE CENTS 
l $2.00 PER YEAR 
BAUHINIA CORYMBOSA. 
The Gardeners’ Chronicle of England pre¬ 
sents an original drawing of Bauhinia corym- 
bosa which we should think M ould prove a de¬ 
cided acquisition in this country as it would be 
very lisely to prove hardy. Indeed it is sur¬ 
prising, as the Chronicle remarks, that this fine 
climber should bo so little known. Our picture 
has been reproduced from the above. The loaf 
consists of two oblique, oblong-obtuse leaflets, 
covered with reddish down on the under-sur¬ 
face. These twin leaflets suggested to Limueus 
the propriety of dedicating the genus to the 
memory of the two botanist brothers, John 
and Casper Bauhin. The flowei-s are in loose 
racemes, the long flower-tulie resembling the 
spur of a pelargonium, and encircling the long, 
slender stalk surrounding the ovary. The five 
petals are regular, pinkish, crenulate at the 
edge, and only three out of the five sta¬ 
mens are perfectly developed. 
RAYS. 
A neighbor cam? to me the other day for ad 
vice regarding “geraniums” to 
bloom in the Winter. His 
plants were planted out dur¬ 
ing the Summer months; 
they grew rankly and bloom¬ 
ed well, but as it was now 
October he guessed he should 
have to lift and pot some of 
them to blossom in the house 
during the Winter months, 
and he hated to, too, as they 
were so pretty in the garden 
whose good looks he should 
mar by their removal, and 
there were no signs of frost 
yet. You are too late, my 
friend. You may lift them 
now, trim them in a little, 
pot them in somewhat small¬ 
sized pots and get blossoms in 
early Spring. Geraniums re¬ 
quire time to mend tbeir loss 
of roots anti crops, and al¬ 
though they may develop all 
the fiower-buds set on them 
now, they will not likely form 
new ones till they recover 
from the check of shifting. 
Geraniums for winter-bloom¬ 
ing should be set out by them¬ 
selves, say^in a row or bed in 
the vegetable gnrden, in an 
open, sunny place with plenty 
of room, and their shoots be 
kept shortened back. About 
the first of August they should 
be lifted and potted and the 
pots plunged In the earth with 
a piece of slate or wood or 
a lot of ashes under them to 
exclude worms. They will 
soon set to rooting and grow¬ 
ing, and you must keep pinch¬ 
ing. Those required for very 
early blooming, say in October 
or November, should not be 
shifted again, but, instead, fed 
with manure water; but those 
required in December and la 
ter may get another shift. 
Geraniums love full sunshine 
and alight,airy place,and blos¬ 
som best when they become 
pot-bound, that is, when their pots are full of 
roots. 
* * 
Many growers have ceased to plant out 
their winter-bloomiug plants, as geraniums, 
stevias, mahernias and the like, on account of 
the gross growth they make, no matter how 
tended. For my own part I prefer planting 
out, if for no other reason than to get a 
vigorous start, but at the same time I empha¬ 
size early lifting and potting and plunging 
out-of-doors for the rest of the season. Plante 
keep clean and stocky and have firmer and 
better flower-bearing wood in October than 
if not lifted till the end of September. 
* * 
What a grand system of parks the Chicago 
folks can boast of, and what belts of glowing 
colored plants may be seen there; such pro¬ 
fusion and such variety! Still if there are not 
in the vegetable kingdom plants enough 
to paint the flower-beds of the Chicago gar¬ 
dens, the gardener has to summon to his aid 
sea-shells, whole and broken! What a libel 
on horticulture, what an abortion of that 
which should be beautiful — a flower-bed. 
But r have seen worse things where better 
might be expected, namely, in Massachusetts. 
A few }’ears ago I visited a pretentious private 
garden there. There were caged animals in a 
wood, buffalo in a field, monkeys in a house, 
ground traps to take folks by surprise, funny 
things in a museum, and a spacious garden 
filled with flower-beds. In a series of scroll 
beds Mexican cotyledons w'ere freely' used, 
and, to add color to the beds, minced glass 
dahlias or whatever else you please, but call 
in no extraneous matter and make wdiat 
should be beautiful detestable. And in that 
Eastern garden, too, is a grotto, to enter 
which each of us paid 10 cents. That, too, is 
another meaningless, abhorrent feature to be 
avoided In gardening; a grotto may be novel, 
is it beautiful ? is it useful ? 
* * 
We are lifting our plants and housing them 
so that frost may not reach them, and as some 
of your readers have green-houses, let me say 
a word to them. In Spring, when plants are 
growing, they need a rising temperature; in 
Summer, while they- are in vigorous growth, 
a uniformly high one, and in the Fall, when 
they have completed their season’s growth, a 
temperature under that of Summer, and grad¬ 
ual^' and steadily lower until we reach the 
minimum, say- 45 or 55 degrees, more or less 
as the case may be. Better be very r careful in 
lifting and potting your plants, than lift care¬ 
lessly and have to place them in close, warm 
houses to recuperate. * * 
I have a fine lot of Chinese Primroses, and 
I have just been shifting them from five-inch 
to six-inch pots. Now I don’t believe in 
crocking pots of four inches and under for 
quick-growing and soft-wooded plants, but for 
pots over four inches 1 think a little drainage 
BAUHINIA CORYMBOSA.—Fig. 497. 
and earthenware—blue, white and red—were 
introduced hi lines and patches! 1 surelv 
hope no reader of the Rural will ever en¬ 
deavor to imitate such hideous apostasy. In 
your flower-beds grow what plants you have 
or can conveniently get—marigolds, asters, 
is a benefit, and my primroses corroborate my 1 
opinion. Several of the five-inch pots had no 
drainage; others had it, and throughout the 
drained pots showed u decided advantage; 
they were much better filled with roots than 
those that were not drained. My primroses 
are grown in cold-frames wherein the pots are 
plunged in coal ashes. 
* * 
If you have not scuffled them out, you will 
find lots of young seedlings of Su'eet Williams, 
Canterbury Bells, Foxgloves, and Perennial 
Larkspurs around the parent plants. Now if 
yon prepare a bed of light, mellow soil in some 
sheltered corner, and plant in it, in rows, these 
little seedlings, the young plants will grow 
much better than if left where they ger m in n, 
ted, and, all being together, you can conven¬ 
ient,h-give thorn a little protection in Winter, 
say with some tree branches or sedge grass 
A cold frame, if yon have it, is a better piece. 
I he Larkspurs will bloom next vear; some of 
Foxgloves ought to; but neither the Sweet 
W Ilhams nor the Canterbury Bells will blos¬ 
som till the year after. Leon. 
farm (Topics. 
EXPERIMENTS ON THE USE OF WILT¬ 
ED POTATOES AS SEED. 
PROF. F. H STORER. 
It has repeatedly been alleged by prac¬ 
tical men that the yield of potatoes is in¬ 
creased when the tubers used as seed are 
allowed to wilt before they are planted. 
The justice of this idea has been verified 
by a Bavarian experiment¬ 
er, Dr. Kraus, who has re¬ 
cently tested the matter metli- 
odiciUy; once in a dry 
year, and again in a season 
favorable for growth. Kraus 
propounded to himself the 
following questions : How 
great a difference is there be¬ 
tween the growth of the 
vines from fresh and from 
wilted seed ? What is the 
cause of this difference? and 
what relation does the in¬ 
creased or diminished growth 
of the tops from wilted seed 
bear to the yield of tubers ? 
For his experiments, he used 
whole potatoes, both large and 
small; some of them he plant¬ 
ed when they were fresh, oth¬ 
ers after the}- were slightly 
wilted, and others still after 
they had been strongly wilted. 
When fresh and wilted seeds 
were planted side by side the 
shoots of the fresh seed start¬ 
ed first above the surface of 
the ground. The retardation 
due to wilting was not partic¬ 
ularly noticeable in case the 
season was moist and the seed 
large, not even when the seed 
had been strongly wilted, but 
it nas distinctly observable 
when small seed was used ; 
ami, in case the season was 
dry and the seed was delayed 
very decidedly, the vines from 
large seed grew appreciably 
higher in all cases than those 
from small seed. But while, 
on the one hand, these differ¬ 
ences tended continually to 
disappear when fresh seed had 
been used, they always in¬ 
creased in the case of wilted 
seed, and to the disadvan¬ 
tage of the vines groMTi from 
small seed. When the seed 
potatoes were large and the 
season favorable for growth, 
even strong wilting did not perceptibly 
diminish the development of the vines. 
Wilting of the seed potatoes appeared not to 
have any influence on the time of blossoming. 
But in a very dry season it happened that the 
flowers became abundant upon the vines from 
