PAXTON’S 
H O RTI CULTURAL RE GI ST E R, 
JULY, 1835. 
HORTICULTURE. 
ON ACCELERATING THE FLOWERING OF PLANTS. 
Plants resemble animals in many things, and in no one more than 
in their respective periods of adolescence; that is, each requires a cer¬ 
tain lapse of time between rising from the seed and producing flowers 
and fruit. Some genera re-produce themselves by seed, at a very early 
period of their lives; others require several years before their fructi¬ 
ferous organs are developed. 
That the fructiferous organs occupy a central station in every grand 
division, as well as in every subdivision of a plant, is very obvious. Look 
at the cauliflower, for instance; we see here a system of roots, a stem 
invested with a certain number of leaves, surrounding the head of 
flowers which is seated on the apex of the stem. When its investment 
of leaves is developed the head of flowers comes forth, blooms, ripens 
seed, and then the whole dies. This process of growth obtains in all 
the plants of the order Cruciferce which are culinary and herbaceous; 
all these also being biennials, if sown at their natural season, viz. when 
the seeds are ripe. 
That their period of adolescence may be very much shortened, is well 
known; this happens in consequence of too early sowing or other mis¬ 
management. If cauliflower seed be sown in the beginning of July, 
the greater number of seedlings will be so much excited by the warmth 
at that season that nearly the whole will show flowers before the winter; 
but this answers no purpose of the cultivator, because the whole plant 
is diminutive and useless, the head being so small that it is technically 
called ff a button.” 
VOL. iv.— NO. XLIX, 
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