22 
THE FLORIST AND POMOLOGIST. 
[ February, 
it can be got to flower at tliis season, as we 
do tlie Deutzia easily. Anyhow, it flowers in 
profusion in March and April in a greenhouse. 
It does well in charred refuse and ordinary 
garden soil mixed.— Henry Knight, Floors. 
POINSETTIA PULCHERRIMA 
PLENISSIMA. 
« HIS is assuredly a grand acquisition 
amongst winter-flowering plants, yet 
it does not appear to be so generally 
grown as its superior merits would lead one to 
suppose. The typical form P. pulcherrima 
is by many exclusively preferred, which appears 
to me to be a decided mistake, more parti¬ 
cularly as the double form is so much more 
lasting, standing double the time, for every 
purpose of embellishment. I quite grant that 
for some time after its circulation, the stock 
being doubtless weakened by hard propagation, 
but few heads were seen bearing out the 
original illustration in fullness and regularity 
of crest. But I find it is much improved by 
culture, and this season it is faultless as regards 
fullness of outline and regularity of its floral 
leaves, every head coming perfect, and dis¬ 
playing its brilliant array of rich deep ver¬ 
milion-scarlet bracts, which produce an effect 
no other plant can surpass. It is also of 
vigorous habit, and retains its ample foliage 
much more persistently than the old variety, 
which it very fitly succeeds in its period of 
blooming. Moreover, it stands much better 
in a cool-temperate house. It is a sterling 
plant, which will amply repay liberal treatment. 
We have many of the heads measuring from 
12 in. to 16 in. in diameter.— Geo. Westland, 
Witley Court. 
FLOWERS—AND FLOWERS. 
GfiDN a paper of characteristic enthusiasm on 
6] p exhibiting Roses, “Wyld Savage,” in the 
Rose Annual of 1879-80, advises aspirants 
to “ weigh well the cost,” and asserts that no 
“ person who wishes to show thirty-six distinct 
varieties, to say nothing of forty-eight, can 
hope to do so, unless he is prepared to spend 
£100 on Roses, and the expenses incidental to 
their culture and exhibition.” 1st, he says, 
£60 will be required for plants, sixty sorts, 
twenty plants of each, giving a total of twelve 
hundred plants ; 2nd, £20 for manure ; and 
3rd, £20 for expenses incidental to competing 
at four different shows as named. 
Upon such a scale few will assume that the 
expenses are under-stated. Parenthetically, I 
would remark, that no provision is made for the 
inevitable cost of cultivating the half acre of 
ground twelve hundred plants, with necessary 
means of access, would occupy ; but my object 
is simply to state the case as given by “Wyld 
Savage,” and in no way to introduce limitations 
beyond these described by him. 
The Rose is everybody’s flower, universally 
popular, by common consent the Queen ; and I 
regard it as no unhealthy ambition on the part 
of the floral aspirant to win honours to himself 
by devoted service to such a gracious and so 
graceful a sovereign. But—ominous but—as 
the Rose is queenly in her attributes, so is she 
queenly in her requirements. She will consent 
to smile only in the most favoured of localities, 
in the purest air, the most open, though per¬ 
fectly sheltered, of aspects, and in a soil, deep 
and fat and rich, but without a taint of sour¬ 
ness. In the back slum, the dingy, dirty, 
smoky two hundred square yards, the average 
garden of the suburban resident, the Rose 
simply declines to live ; and despite attempts, 
again and again repeated, to win her smiles, 
she pines and dies. This is no exaggerated 
picture—it describes an experience of more 
than twenty years. 
How serious, then, are the difficulties be¬ 
setting the -would-be cultivator and successful 
exhibitor of the Rose ! First, he must have a 
well-filled purse ; next, the command of a large 
piece of ground, suitable in character and site; 
and, lastly, a devotion and endurance resolute 
to know no difficulty or toil in the race for 
success. How the number of aspirants must 
be limited by the conditions, so onerous— 
so, in the case of the suburban resident, in¬ 
superable 1 
Can I, then, name no flower to compensate 
the poor suburban resident ? Certainly I can, 
many ; but prominently two—the Auricula, 
winsome queen of spring, and the Carnation 
and Picotee, dianthus , Jlos nohilis , “ godlike ” 
flowers of summer. Let me recite a friend’s 
experience :—He long tried the Rose, and suc¬ 
cessive failures (punishing in the extreme 
because of the only too pitiably expressed pain 
of the poor puny plants, pining for pure 
air,) had in no way subdued his admiration 
or limited his delight; but two years since, 
