274 
arc flowering shoots that do not root easily, or there is 
• hardly any short young wood fit for cuttings on them. 
Whenever one meets with a case of this description, the 
best remedy is to keep a few reserve jdants in pots all 
the summer, from the spring propagation. There is a 
section of the fancy geraniums or pelargoniums which 
every one thought very difficult to root in the autumn 
a few years hack ; Queen Victoria and Prince of Orange 
are fair examples of this class, and so is Lady Flora 
Hastings, of which J have this season the best bed I 
have yet seen, from plants that are four years old, 
which were almost neglected, as I did not use this 
variety for beds these three years. About this time 
last year I cut down these plants and shook the soil 
from them in the usual way, and they were kept cool 
all last winter and spring, so that they made very slow 
growth, with thick, short-jointed branches, just the 
reverse of what it usually is. They were planted out 
last May, and have done remarkably well, so much so 
that it is restored into the bedding catalogue again, 
although there is hardly an end to the varieties of these 
speckled geraniums for beds, and many of them are of 
the same class as Queen Victoria in respect to propaga¬ 
tion. 
There is a clever gardener now in the north of Ire¬ 
land, who lived with me here some years since, and I 
well recollect of an argument we once had about striking 
cuttings. He, and another man who is still with me, 
maintained that every plant—no matter from what 
country, or of what nature—if it made shoots fit for 
cuttings, such cuttings could be made to grow; neither 
of them being then aware of the peculiarity of this 
section of geraniums, which were new to us at that 
time. To try their skill to the utmost I offered to give 
six cuttings to each of them, and in six weeks if one 
cutting out of the six was rooted I would give the lucky 
propagator five shillings for it; and when I told them 
the cuttings would be geranium cuttings I had some 
difficulty to persuade them to the trial. “ Oh! they did 
not want to be bothered with things which Aunt Harriet 
and her maid Susan, down at -, could do as well 
as any gardener.” However, with a little soft reason¬ 
ing, they did undertake the trial, and lost it completely; 
for I believe they tried many cuttings of these geraniums 
in various ways, but not a single one of them did they 
root the whole season. Now, this will sound odd to 
those not aware of the fact, that a section of geraniums 
will not strike from cuttings in summer, except in one 
particular way; but so it is, and this particidar way 
haprpensto be the easiest way of all to strike geraniums— 
which is just as curious the other way. Not many 
months back two of our very best gardeners asked me 
very seriously if I knew how the Unique geranium —one 
of the finest of our bedding varieties—could be increased 
abundantly in summer, and some told me they could 
not strike it at all, except in the spring, and that they 
were obliged to keep plants in pots on purpose for 
spring propagation, as I have been recommended to do 
with the Auagallis, &c.; and not only that, but when these 
plants were in the prime of their bloom in September, 
or earlier, they were under the necessity of cutting them 
down like the old sorts, in order that a stock of young 
shoots might be made before winter, that would come in 
for cuttings early in the spring, and this is, by the way, 
a very judicious way of managing every one of this 
section. But yet it is not at all necessary to sacrifice 
one’s flowers in September, and later, for the Unique, in 
particular, if stopped back two or three times in July 
and early in August, will go on flowering down to near 
Christmas. 
The gardener who first wrote to me how to root Queen 
Victoria geraniums from summer cuttings, is now in 
charge oi one of the largest gardens in the United 
States of America; and I hope ho will see his laconic | 
[August 1. ! 
receipt in print. It runs as follows:—“ Put in the cut¬ 
tings under a north wall, and do not water them or look j 
at them for three months, and they will be sure to root 
by that time.” And true enough they will; and that is 
the only way to overcome their natural disposition for 
blooming; and as long as they are in a flowering condi¬ 
tion their whole strength seems to be turned that way, 
and they will not root. But cut off the supply from the 
roots, by making them into cuttings, and place these 
cuttings as far from stimulating agencies as can be, and 
immediately they cease blooming, and turn then - exer¬ 
tion the other way and form roots. If, on the other 
hand, after we have detached portions of these plants 
and made them into cuttings,—if we continue the stimu- j 
lus of high cultivation,—inclose them under hand-glasses 
or in close hotbeds, where the confined damp atmosphere 
is grateful to vegetation, we merely check their usual 
growth, not stop it altogether; and as long as they grow i 
at that season they will flower and not root; for it seems ! 
foreign to their nature to carry on the two processes at j 
one and the same time. Hence the true cause of the j 
complete failures which attended the first attempts at 
striking cuttings from these plants while they were in 
blooming growth, so to speak. My friend’s advice about 
such cuttings must not, however, be construed too lite¬ 
rally. Although it is essential to success that an entire 
absence of growth be insisted on while the cuttings are 
forming their roots, it will be equally requisite that 
everything which tends to damp or otherwise injure soft 
cuttings should be guarded against. If we attend to 
these, and see that an entire cessation of growth in the 
leaves is maintained as long as the roots are forming, 
all these geraniums root as freely through the summer I 
months as Tom Thumb, or any other scarlet geranium. 
Yet, when one has plants of any of these shy rooting j 
sorts in pots, it is a good plan to have them cut-in by 
the end of August, and to grow them on freely to Christ¬ 
mas; to stop them in October, or November, or when 
they have made four joints of young wood, and after 
that stopping to let them grow on till a hotbed or somo 
hothouse is at work in early spring, and then to make 
cuttings of all the young tops; if one could then—say in 
February—force them gently for a month or six weeks, 
another and a double crop of spring young cuttings 
could be procured before the end of March, that would 
soon root in bottom heat, and be ready to plant out in 
beds by the middle or end of May. 
A celebrated flower gardener from Surrey called here 
this morning, who makes these and, indeed, all the bed¬ 
ding geraniums his chief bedding stock ; and although 
he is well versod in all the leading sorts used round 
London, he was much surprised at the number of varie¬ 
ties we use here. He never saw the White Unique as a 
bedder before; and I had some white seedlings of the 
Perpetual-flowering Geraniums, with very small crumpled 
leaves, with which he was particularly pleased; and he 
agrees with me how desirable it would be to follow up 
these small leaved crosses. I wish I could urge on 
breeders to turn their attention to this class of bedders 
of the striped varieties. He thought Spleenii was my 
best; but to do it full justice it should be planted in 
poor light soil, as it is a free grower, which the other 
striped ones are not — I mean such as Sidonia and 
Diadematum bicolor. 
I received many good hints from this visitor, of which ' 
I shall make use in these pages, as relating to a plant 
on which I lately wrote— Tropceolum speciosum. He i 
told me the best way is to let it remain in the ground 
all the winter, and then it is as strong as d'ropccolum 
pentaphyUum, and will cover a great breadth of trellis, 
dowering in the sun just as freely as on the north side 
of a wall. One is always pleased meeting with a frank, ; 
candid person, who will tell just what he thinks if his j 
opinion is asked; because more than one-half of the 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
