June 
the ground, and fasten it there by strong hooked 
pegs. To this trellis of wire or cord tie the down¬ 
ward long shoots, thinning away the weaker ones. 
In the autumn cut off only the very extremity of the 
preserved shoots, which will flower their whole 
length, giving to the tree the appearance of a half¬ 
globe, and literally one mass of flowers. But out- 
sheet of paper informs us we must close this pleasant 
subject, or we shall be obliged to leave short another 
of our no less delightful tasks—the consideration of 
FLORISTS’ FLOWERS. 
The plants of this descripton that require peculiar 
care now are the carnation, picotee, and pink. 
The Pink will be now opening its flowers. To 
prevent them opening irregularly—that is, in tech¬ 
nical phrase, barsting, or opening on one side more 
than the other—let each pod be encircled either with 
a ring of bass mat, or with, what is better, a ring of 
Indian-rubber, and with a pair of small scissors open 
the green cup or calyx on the opposite side to that 
where it is appearing to burst too much. This will 
allow the petals of the flower to spread open regu¬ 
larly, so as to form perfectly round flowers—a form 
indispensable where perfection is desired. The same 
method must be followed with the carnation. The 
picotee very seldom requires it, and for this reason, 
that the petals of the latter flower are shorter, and 
fewer in number, and so are very rarely seen to open 
on one side more than another. 
Carnations and Picotees will benefit at this season 
by being watered once a week in dry weather with 
liquid manure of very moderate strength. 
Layering Carnations and Picotees. —The young 
shoots will be now long enough to layer. We think 
this the safest and surest way of propagating these 
highly prized flowers. Where, however, they pro¬ 
duce more shoots than can possibly be layered, take 
them off, and pipe them in the same manner as 
described previously for the pink. Having removed 
them, you will have more room to operate upon the 
remainder. Trim off the lower leaves with a sharp 
knife, without injuring the bark ; leave about three 
pair of leaves, and just below the third pair make 
an incision or slit with the knife, about midway 
between two joints. Place a thin piece of wood in 
the incision or slit to keep it open, peg the shoot 
down carefully, and so proceed till every layer is 
done round the plant. Then cover them with some 
light rich soil; and go on from plant to plant 
till your whole stock is layered. The best kind of 
pegs are made of the fronds (branches) of the com¬ 
mon brake or fern. Water the layei-s occasionally, 
and they will nearly all root, and make fine plants 
by the end of August. T. Appleby. 
GREENHOUSE AND WINDOW 
GARDENING. 
Hybridizing.—I have said that the stamens, or 
male organs, in a flower, are analagous to the floral 
leaves or petals, double flowers being occasioned by 
the conversion of the stamens into petals; and hence 
I have inferred that the petals are perfectly useless, 
either as far as the impregnation of the ovule or the 
future development of the seed is concerned. I also 
said that the petals might he cut off whenever they 
interfered with the operation of dusting the pollen, 
as they often do in tube-shaped flowers, when the 
pistils are hid from view, such as the verbena, the 
florist’s polyanthus, and in many other flowers of 
155 
various forms.* But I will explain this more in de¬ 
tail, as some expert hybridizers, whom I could name, 
seem not to be aware of this fact. We have the evi¬ 
dence of our senses that stamens are converted into 
petals—no one doubts that, who has the least know¬ 
ledge on the subject; the petals must, consequently, 
partake more or less of the nature of stamens, for 
the change has not altered their nature, only their 
outward form; and we all know, by this time, that 
the office of the stamens is simply to uphold the an¬ 
thers or pollen bags on their summits, and when the 
pollen is ripe and dispersed the office of the stamens 
is at an end. We also know that flowers selected for 
crossing must be deprived of their stamens, to get 
rid of the pollen, before either it or the stigma is 
lipe. Therefore, seeing that this does not affect the 
operation of the pistils when touched by pollen from 
another flower, why not get rid of the petals as well as 
the stamens, if they are in your way when you are cross¬ 
ing the flower, seeing they are exactly of the same 
nature? If you hold still to the belief that the petals 
are endowed with the property of supplying nutrition, 
or are in any other way essential to give power or 
effect either to the pollen or young seeds, I must refer 
you to the great Decandolle, who is the first authority 
in botany and vegetable physiology, and who has 
clearly explained all this in his “Vegetable Organo¬ 
graphy,” translated into English, a few years since, by 
Bougliton Ivingdon, Esq., who was so kind as to pre¬ 
sent me with the work^ although we are perfect stran¬ 
gers, and who, if his eye should ever glance over this 
page, will be glad to learn that his labours have been 
of great use to Die. Between 1829 and 1836 1 ob¬ 
tained perfect seeds from between 90 and 100 kinds 
of plants, after first depriving them of their petals 
for the purpose of experiment; and, in 1837, I said 
in the Gardener's Magazine, that the presence of the 
petals is not necessary for the jmrposes of cross¬ 
breeding; and, after all this, the future historian of 
our gardening, in the middle of the nineteenth cen¬ 
tury, will have occasion to place these three significant 
marks ! ! ! after telling his readers that,in a standard 
work on flowers, published in London in 1818, very 
minute rules are laid down to avoid damaging the 
petals of a flower in the act of hybridizing it, as 
if that could make any difference to the issue of the 
experiment. I shall not mention either the book or 
the writer farther than to say that both are of the 
first respectability, and the latter deservedly accounted 
the most successful of our hybridizers. But we are 
all of us in our infancy in this department, for it is 
only about 70 years since the first experiments, to 
ascertain the possibility of obtaining crosses in the 
vegetable kingdom, were instituted in Germany by 
Kolreuter, who, therefore, is the father of this branch 
of our craft. In England, these experiments were 
followed out, at a much later date, by the late Mr. 
Knight, of Downton Castle, then President of the 
London Horticultural Society, and chiefly with the 
view of improving our fruits and vegetables; and, 
about the same time, by the Hon. and Rev. Dr. Her¬ 
bert, late Dean of Manchester, who took a wider range, 
and experimented on many of our popular flowers, 
and more particularly on bulbs, with which he was 
more conversant than any other botanist. The late 
Mr. Sweet, a clever practical botanist and cultivator, 
much about the same period, was engaged in similar 
* At first sight this may appear to be opposed to the opinions ex¬ 
pressed at p. 125, but it is not so, for the writer of the “ Phenomena 
of the Season” quite agrees with Mr. Beaton, that the petals may be 
removed without injury to fertility after they have expanded, or 
“ after the stamens, &c., arc fully grown.” In the Gum cistus they 
do so naturally.—E d. C. G. 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
