1368 
THE RURAL, NEW-YORKER 
December 20, 
rilDICTMAC DIAAITC 
Every year the florist trade papers tell 
of increasing sales in Christmas plants. 
There is, naturally, a heavy trade in 
cut flowers, but plants hold the leading 
place, whether single specimens or groups 
in baskets or vases. 
Ardisia Ckenulata. —First in demand 
are plants having red berries. These are 
limited in number; a leading favorite is 
Ardisia erenulata, which has shining 
dark green leaves, slightly waving at the 
edges, and bunches of bright red berries, 
which often hang on for a full year, all 
through the period the plant is form¬ 
ing new flowers and fruit. .The Ardisia 
is of very easy culture; it does not endui'e 
frost but will bear a temperature not 
lower than 45 degrees. A mixture of 
loam and well-rotted leaf mold, with 
abundant drainage, suits them; the soil 
should not become soggy, though a fair 
amount of moisture is needed. About 
the only insect attacking Ardisias is a 
large brown scale, which may be sponged 
off with soapsuds or tobacco water. After 
an Ardisia becomes about two feet tall it 
often becomes rather naked at the bot¬ 
tom, with a long bare stem, and under 
greenhouse conditions it is possible to 
discard the stem, and root the top over 
again, though this would seem a precar¬ 
ious plan for the window gardener. The 
method is to make an incision in the 
stem at the point where it is to be cut. 
and to cover the wounded part with a 
bunch of sphagnum moss, which is tight¬ 
ly wound with string, and kept damp; in 
about a month or six weeks the moss is 
filled with roots, when the head may be 
cut from the stem, and potted, with its 
new root system, thus producing a sym¬ 
metrical plant fully clothed with foliage. 
This mossing system of propagation is 
very largely practiced with the rubber 
plant. 
Ornamental Peppers. —Another red- 
berried plant that is newer in the florist 
trade is a small-fruited Capsicum or red 
pepper; symmetrical plants completely 
covered with small scarlet fruit. It is 
treated like ordinary peppers, only grown 
in pots so as to be in full fruit at Christ¬ 
mas. The familiar Jerusalem cherry, 
Solanum Pseudo-Capsicum, with round 
bright red fruit, has long been popular, 
and is a very satisfactory house plant 
This may be grown from seed sown in¬ 
doors in February. The plants are re¬ 
potted as they need it, and during Sum¬ 
mer plunged in the pots in a partially 
shaded place out of doors, and watered 
freely. The tips of the shoots may be 
pinched off, to keep the plants sym¬ 
metrical. When the fruit is setting and 
ripening 'the plants must not be over- 
watered. Plants can be carried over from 
one season to the next by cutting back 
in Spring and plunging outdoors again 
in Summer; however, it is usual to raise 
new plants each season. 
The Otaiieite Orange, well set with 
golden fruit, is another favored Christ¬ 
mas pot plant, and is very satisfactory 
in the house. Ordinary living room temp¬ 
erature suits it, and a well-drained soil 
that is not permitted to become sodden. 
The leaves may be sponged with clear 
water to remove dust, and if scale ap¬ 
pear they may be removed with soap¬ 
suds or tobacco water. The fruit is 
not edible. There is, however, a green¬ 
house lemon, called the Ponderosa, that 
is a satisfactory house plant, and its fruit 
is edible. The lemons are extremely 
large in size, and the plant attractive in 
growth. 
Begonias. —Among the showy flower¬ 
ing plants prominent at Christmas, and 
indeed through the Winter months, is the 
Begonia Gloire de Lorraine, which forms 
a mass of bright pink flowers. This is 
not as easy to grow as many other Be¬ 
gonias, but can be managed in the house. 
When a flowering plant is obtained it 
must be watched to avoid drying out, for 
the great mass of flowers and foliage uses 
up moisture rapidly, and if too dry the 
whole plant will flag and drop. It is 
also likely to drop flowers and foliage if 
badly chilled. However, an equable temp¬ 
erature and careful watering will keep it 
blooming for a long time, and it may 
then be carried over to the next season. 
When flowering is over in early Spring 
put the plants in a cool light place, and 
give less water, so that they will take a 
partial rest. During Summer keep in a 
partially shaded place where they will 
start into growth again, and in the Fall 
they should be gradually brought into 
full sunlight, and then brought into 
bloom. This plant does not like too large 
a pot. It is propagated by cuttings in 
early Winter. 
Cyclamens, which are sold in enorm¬ 
ous quantities at Christmas, are in 
steady demand throughout their bloom¬ 
ing season. Florists rarely carry 
over old corms, depending on seed 
sown about 12 to 15 mouths before 
the time they are expected to bloom. The 
usual sowing season is from September 
to December, and growth is kept up 
continuously to the blooming period. Seed 
is sown in shallow pans, in light sandy 
Flower Tot and Drainage. 
soil. The soil must be friable and care¬ 
fully leveled; the seeds covered a little 
more than their own depth. Prick off 
when first leaf is developed into thumb 
pots or pans, and repot as needed, giving 
the final potting about November 1. The 
Cyclamen needs plenty of light, and a 
temperature that does not go above 50 
degrees at night. Soil should be good 
loam enriched with well-rotted horse man¬ 
ure, with some sand added if at all heavy. 
There should be a good layer of broken 
crocks or other drainage material, in the 
bottom of the pots, for while abundant 
water is needed the soil must never be¬ 
come sodden. The Cyclamen is subject 
to few troubles; sometimes an infesta¬ 
tion of green fly calls for tobacco, and 
there is also a disease, bacterial or fun¬ 
goid, that sometimes causes weak growth 
and lack of bloom, but for this we can 
only advise discarding affected stock and 
making a fresh start. In house culture 
the most common causes of trouble with 
Cyclamens are too high a temperature, 
and lack of fresh air. 
Winter Bulbs. —For real satisfaction 
in the window, all through the Winter, 
nothing really equals bulbs. They can 
be brought on in succession from Thanks¬ 
giving. when the Roman hyacinths begin, 
until the last tulips and lilies at Easter. 
Of course it is now too late to start them 
for this Winter but they should be kept 
in mind for another season, October and 
November being the season for planting, 
either indoors or out. except in a few 
cases. We have given up growing hya¬ 
cinths in water (which calls for a spe¬ 
cially made glass vase), and get better 
results by potting them. The Chinese 
Sacred Lily, which is a Narcissus of the 
many-flowered section, grows well in 
water, the bulb being supported by a 
bowlful of pebbles, but we think thi 
keeps in condition longer potted in sandy 
soil. Do not forget to include Crocuses 
among bulbs for house culture; a num¬ 
ber of roots, all one color, planted in a 
flat pan, will give beautiful results. Cro¬ 
cuses cannot be hurried into bloom ; they 
must be allowed to take their own time 
usually flowering from February on. 
They are very cheap. We prefer to buy 
separate colors rather than mixed lots. 
Women in Farm Labor. 
It lias become the custom of late years 
for Americans who go to Europe to study 
German and French agriculture. Ger¬ 
many in particular with a population of 
about .‘100 per square mile, produces near¬ 
ly 06 per cent of her food products and 
95 per cent of her meat supply. This is 
done on soil which has been under culti¬ 
vation for centuries. How can it be 
done? In this country the usual labor 
system would prohibit it. Most visitors 
come home to tell of the large number of 
German women found working in the 
field. Richard Haughton makes the fol¬ 
lowing statement which is endorsed by 
most travellers: 
Perhaps nothing was more conspicuous 
in Germany than the number of women 
working in the fields. In some places 
over SO women were working in one 
field. In one field it was beet sugar, and 
in another field, where they were thrash¬ 
ing rye with a steam thrasher, there were 
eight women and two men doing the 
work. At one of the experiment sta¬ 
tions in Germany, when the question of 
manure spreaders was brought up, the 
assistant explained that with them the 
women spread the manure, as was seen on 
a field near by, where the women were 
unloading and spreading manure. The 
reason for this has been given that the 
men are away on military duty. Whether 
this is the only reason or not is hard to 
say. but the percentage of women working 
to the female population in Germany, 
England and the United States is re¬ 
spectively, 30, 24 and 14, as compared 
to an army and navy enlistment of 2.3, 
1.1 and 0.4 per cent in the same coun¬ 
tries. That this is in all probability not 
the only cause is shown by the fact that 
Russia has the highest percentage of her 
population in the army and navy (3.6) 
and her percentage of working women is 
only S, the lowest of any nation of which 
we have the figures. 
This may be called the present strength 
and the future weakness of German eflL 
ciency. This cheap labor enables the 
Germans of this generation to produce 
food and manufactured goods cheaply, but 
it is done at a fearful price in future. 
This constant toil at hard labor may 
make “efficient” wives and mothers, but 
the world needs much more than that. 
Our American farm women must have 
opportunities for rest and reading and 
intelligence. 
“WOMAN’S WORK.” 
The Tired Mother. 
As a back-to-the-lander, happy in our 
new home. I have been studying on this 
problem of children leaving the farm. 
There is one factor that enters into the 
situation and has far-reaching effects. 
That is the home life, or atmosphere of 
the home as made by the mother. What 
I mean is this: Most farmers’ wives are 
so overburdened with work that by the 
time the children are old enough to need 
or want amusement she has had all the 
energy taken out of her; consequently 
the children look elsewhere for their in¬ 
terest in life. 
Here are a couple of little illustra¬ 
tions: When we moved on to our farm 
we had the house fixed over, as it was 
over 40 years old, and among other things 
I insisted on having new floors, as there 
is nothing that makes it easier for a 
woman than having good floors with a 
plain waxed surface, provided you real¬ 
ly like to have a good clean house the 
year round. When it came to laying 
a new floor in the second floor hall there 
was trouble. The carpenter insisted on 
just laying the new floor up against the 
railing around the stair-hole, and as the 
spindles in the railing were round it 
made very bad corners next every spindle 
in which the dust would collect, and 
which it would be almost impossible to 
clean unless one happened to have a 
vacuum cleaner. I explained this to the 
carpenter, and told him that in all the 
homes where we had seen new floors laid 
over old ones they had taken the railing 
: up, bored the necessary holes in the now 
floor, and put it back; but instead of 
being nice about it and telling me that 
most of the jobs he had done had been 
done that way and consequently he had 
figured on it that way in his specifica¬ 
tions, he said “Oh, well, if you are too- 
lazy to do your housework properly you 
can’t expect me to fix things up so fancy 
for you.” 
Another instance: As we moved on to 
the farm in the Spring, so that the chil¬ 
dren and I could spend our Summer 
there—although my husband could not 
come to stay until the late Fall—we hired 
a man to come and do all the chores, etc., 
which were not very heavy. When we 
hired him my husband explained very 
carefully that he was hired for that first 
year at least to look after my comfort, 
and help with the heavy work of the 
house, as outside of the vegetable garden 
there was no regular farm work. As I 
had lived in the city or suburb of a city 
since I was 12 years old I naturally ex¬ 
pected he would clean rugs and kill and 
clean chickens, and things like that, but 
he objected strenuously and said that was 
a woman’s work. As matter of fact, car¬ 
pet and rug cleaning is too heavy for a 
woman, and as for cleaning chickens, 
there is no reason why the man should 
not take his turn at that unpleasant task. 
I have lived under both conditions of 
life—where it was work at household 
tasks all day long, and where the work 
seemed never done—and under the other 
condition, a fair amount of work with 
an equal amount of play (you might say) 
or recreation, and my husband emphatic¬ 
ally asserts that the latter condition is 
much the better. At any rate he seems 
to find his home so pleasant that he but 
seldom goes away, unless it is somewhere 
we go together. f. b. t. 
The Glastonbury Thorn. 
Much interest was aroused recently by 
the planting of a tiny shrub in the 
churchyard of old Trinity, on lower 
Broadway, New York. This shrub was 
a descendant of the Holy Thorn of Glas¬ 
tonbury Abbey in Somersetshire, England, 
a hawthorn whose habit of extraordin¬ 
arily early blooming has made it the sub¬ 
ject of many old legends. Glastonbury is, 
as far as we know, the site of the earliest 
Christian church in Great Britain, an 
ancient structure of willow withes and 
mud first occupying, it is believed, the 
site of its later cathedral, long before 
St. Augustine made his evangelizing tour 
of the British Isles in the sixth century. 
According to legend Joseph of Arimatliea, 
a disciple of St. Philip, visited Glaston¬ 
bury in the year 63, supporting himself 
with a staff of thorn brought from Pales¬ 
tine. The heathens he sought to convert 
demanded a miracle, whereupon he stuck 
his hawthorn staff in the ground, and 
though it was midwinter, it at once burst 
into growth and bloom. It flourished 
thereafter in the Abbey grounds, and 
whatever we may think of the legend, it 
is certain that for centuries an ancient 
thorn bush grew there, which continued 
this habit of Winter blpoming. It was 
believed to bloom always on Old Christ¬ 
mas (the Feast of the Epiphany, falling 
on January 6) and in old times some 
were said to object to keeping Christmas 
on December 25, because the Holy Thorn 
had settled the later date. However we 
noted in the London Gardeners’ Chronicle 
a few years ago that a bush of the Glas¬ 
tonbury Thorn at the Botanic Garden, 
Dublin, was in full bloom December 24, 
so the plant there was giving its adher¬ 
ence to the new-style date. It is said 
that the original bush at Glastonbury 
was severely hacked and mangled by 
Cromwell’s soldiers during the Civil 
Wars, who sought to destroy it as a relic 
of superstition. 
Botanically, the Glastonbury thorn is 
now classed as a variety of the English 
hawthorn, and is called Cratsegus Oxya- 
cantha pnccox. It is not likely to give 
Christmas bloom in this locality, but 
should flower very early. As the haw¬ 
thorn attains a great age, it is quite 
possible that the same bush, at Glaston¬ 
bury. passed its millenium. Another very 
ancient British hawthorn existing, we 
think, somewhere near the Vale of the 
White Horse in Berkshire or Hampshire, 
up to recent years was associated with 
Alfred the Great, having a clear pedigree 
of more than a thousand years. 
