85o 
TIIE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
December 20 
• Ruralisms 
NOTES FROM THE RURAL GROUNDS 
Record Price for a Gladiolus. —The 
stock and control of the large-flowered 
hybrid Gladiolus, Princeps, produced as 
a result of a long series of breeding ex¬ 
periments among new and rare species 
of this popular plant, was lately pur¬ 
chased by Vaughan’s Seed Store, Chi¬ 
cago and New York, for $1,000. Some 
high prices have been heretofore paid 
for new Gladioli, but to the best of our 
information this sum is a record price 
for a single variety. The great size as 
well as the showy color of Princeps, 
which may be described as a true Salvia 
scarlet, and the unmatched vigor of its 
growth give it a commercial value far 
above any variety brought forward for 
many years. It will be offered next 
Spring by many seedsmen at a moder¬ 
ate introductory price, and in time 
will doubtless become abundant enough 
for general planting should it continue 
in public favor. 
An account of the origin of Princeps 
was given in The R. N.-Y. for April 14, 
1900, but a brief statement at this time 
may interest new readers. Gladiolus 
hybridus princeps was grown in 1895 on 
the present Rural Grounds from seeds 
produced the previous year as the result 
of hybridizing G. cruentus, from South 
Africa with a large-flowered garden va¬ 
riety of the Childsii strain, ino record 
of the exact pollen parent was kept in 
these crossings except when a supposed 
true botanical species was used. G. 
cruentus is a very shy seeder in north¬ 
ern climates even under the best glass¬ 
house conditions. Although many hun¬ 
dred pollinations were made with the 
most scrupulous care, only 26 good seeds 
resulted. They were sown in a single 
five-inch pot under glass in early No¬ 
vember, and germinated in. the ordinary 
greenhouse temperature of 45 to 60 de¬ 
grees, with a rise to 70 or 80 on bright 
sunny days. The soil found best adapt¬ 
ed to such seedlings is sound loam taken 
from under the sod near an old fence, 
lightened with a little fine sand. We 
always like to use a new pot or a care¬ 
fully cleaned old one, sterilized by an 
hour or two of baking heat in an oven, 
for our rarest seeds, to lessen the 
chances of disease infection. No fertil- 
lizer is needed if soil is good, but a little 
old cow or sheep manure, placed over 
the drainage material, which should be 
free and open, is often an advantage. 
Animal manures or decaying vegetable 
matters should not be placed so near 
the surface that the young bulbs or 
corms are likely to come in contact with 
them. The seedlings completed their 
growth in March and ripened up little 
corms from the size of a wheat grain to 
a large pea. They were sifted out and 
kept in a warm dry place until the mid¬ 
dle of May, when they were sown out¬ 
side, like peas, in good garden soil. The 
strongest grower of the lot and the only 
one to send up a flower spike the same 
season was the variety since named 
Princeps. The blooms at once attracted 
attention from their great size, fine 
color, perfect form and finish, but many 
years’ experience had taught us to be 
chary in judging the value of seedlings 
at this stage, as many kinds of extraor¬ 
dinary beauty at first bloom either fall 
off later in quality or propagate so slow¬ 
ly that it is never possible to get up a 
good stock. Princeps, however, has the 
happy balance of qualities always hoped 
for by hybridizers, but so seldom found, 
and developed with uninterrupted vigor 
until the increase this season warrant¬ 
ed offering it for sale. It usually re¬ 
quires 10 to 12 years to get up a suffi¬ 
cient stock of a new Gladiolus variety 
to meet the wholesale trade, and only a 
few kinds of phenomenal vigor can be 
so handled as to propagate with suffi¬ 
cient certainty to supply a large de¬ 
mand. Many thousands of named va¬ 
rieties have been introduced in the last 
30 years, but the list of practical kinds 
adapted for general planting is still very 
small. As a rule it is less trouble and 
expense to grow 100,000 Gladioli, “no 
two alike,” as generally announced in 
offering mixed seedlings, than to propa¬ 
gate the first thousand of a single meri¬ 
torious new variety. It only needs a 
sufficient number of seeds and skill and 
patience enough to grow them two or 
three seasons, but it is discouraging 
work to begin with the few chance cor- 
mels produced by a new kind with the 
prospect that several years may elapse 
before the first dozen full-sized corms 
are grown. We have gone somewhat 
into detail about the growing of Gladioli 
that it may be made clear the value of 
a new variety largely depends on ease 
and certainty of propagation. The bloom 
and habit may be perfect beyond all 
precedent, but if the variety cannot be 
duplicated nor increased without undue 
difficulty it is of limited usefulness, and 
can never be widely disseminated, as 
the cost of individual specimens must 
always be relatively high. 
Gladiolus cruentus, the seed parent of 
Princeps, is a rare and quite local spe¬ 
cies, probably confined to a few moun¬ 
tain tops in eastern South Africa. It 
does not take kindly to most garden 
soils, and though occasionally collected 
and listed in foreign catalogues making 
a specialty of rare bulbous plants, the 
true species is seldom furnished when 
ordered. Several years were wasted by 
the Rural Grounds workers in growing 
other species bought for G. cruentus be¬ 
fore the real type was secured, and an 
almost incredible number of hybridiza¬ 
tions since made with the widest pos¬ 
sible range of species and choice gar¬ 
den kinds have yielded only the most 
commonplace results. 
An important feature in determining 
the usefulness of a promising new plant 
lies in testing it in different localities 
and under various conditions of culti¬ 
vation. It may be of only local excel¬ 
lence, or it may be adapted to a wide 
range of cultivation. This means de¬ 
lay, trouble and expense, as well as dan¬ 
ger that portions of the stock may fall 
into unscrupulous hands, but no accur¬ 
ate forecast of its prospective value can 
otherwise be obtained. Gladiolus prin¬ 
ceps has been grown with perfect suc¬ 
cess in many localities ranging from the 
Atlantic to the Pacific coasts, and from 
the Gulf States to Canada, as well as 
several European countries. It has only 
been exhibited a few times, but has al¬ 
ways received the highest awards at 
home and abroad. While the price re¬ 
ceived for the stock in its present de¬ 
velopment must be considered a satis¬ 
factory compensation of the labors re¬ 
sulting in its production, we fear that a 
fair computation of the time and ex¬ 
penditures incident to it, if subtracted 
from the sum received, would make this 
thousand-dollar draft look much like 
the oft-quoted “30 cents.” 
Variation in Gladiolus Seedlings. 
—Hybridization between Gladiolus spe¬ 
cies and varieties has been going on in- 
termittingly for almost 200 years, but 
not until the celebrated many-flowered 
red and yellow variety, Gandavensis, 
made its appearance in a Belgian nur¬ 
sery, about the year 1841. was the breed¬ 
ing of Gladioli for garden decoration 
carried on in something of a systematic 
manner. Gandavensis was plainly a 
seedling of the old Natal Parrot Gladio¬ 
lus, G. Psittacinus, pollinated in all 
probability with a light colored species, 
such as the one now known as G. opposl- 
tiflorus. Gandavensis has remarkable 
potency in impressing its main charac¬ 
teristics of form and habit on its most 
remote descendants, and was formerly 
so largely used in breeding as to merit 
the term of parent of modern decorative 
Gladioli. Its progeny has been so thor¬ 
oughly intercrossed and further hybri¬ 
dized with all procurable species that 
all fixity of type seems lost. One may 
plant self-pollinated seeds from a white 
or yellow root and get every imaginable 
shade of red, while seeds of dark va¬ 
rieties sometimes produce very good 
light flowers. But observation indicates 
that Gladioli, especially larg&, open- 
flowered kinds, are seldom self-pollinat¬ 
ing when grown in northern latitudes, 
probably owing to a scarcity of congen¬ 
ial insects. The blooms are sometimes 
visited by large bees and moths as well 
as humming birds, but the stigmas are 
not often receptive until the day after 
the anthers discharge their pollen, and 
when seed is produced it is likely the 
effective pollen came from some other 
bloom or plant. Varieties with excep¬ 
tionally wide flowers, such as Princeps, 
carry the stigmas so high that pollen 
can only reach them by the most acci¬ 
dental means, and are therefore very 
shy seeders. Princeps will scarcely aver¬ 
age one seed to 10,000 blooms except 
when hand-pollinated under favorable 
conditions. Narrow-flowered kinds, 
however, often seed profusely, as a 
bulky insect laden with active pollen 
from another bloom is quite certain to 
effect fertilization as he bustles in and 
out of the blooms on a thrifty spike. 
The results of Gladiolus seed gathered 
at random from even the best flowers 
are almost invariably disappointing, 
though there should be a chance of get¬ 
ting something good. The writer once 
planted 10,u00 seeds purported to have 
been saved from 100 of the best known 
varieties. There was a great difference 
in germinating power, some packets pro¬ 
ducing a plant for nearly every seed, 
others only one or two plants to the 100 
seeds contained. It was much trouble 
to keep the lots separate until blooming 
time, two and three years later, and the 
final result showed substantially no dif¬ 
ference between the seedlings of the di¬ 
verse varieties. The variation is so 
great even among carefully hybridized 
seeds that it does not seem worth while 
to preserve records of different crosses 
except when desirous of noting the in¬ 
fluence of new species or other fixed 
types. One can only work over the 
widest available range, grow as many 
seedlings as possible, and be duly thank¬ 
ful if anything really useful should turn 
up. w. v. F. 
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Mild cases, not chronic, are often 
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