May 5, 1888. 
THE GARDENING WORLD. 
565 
thick set. This kind, by being planted outside during 
the summer is much improved in colour ; in fact, a 
line of young plants of this variety, if planted as an 
edging to a shrubbery border, gives as good an effect 
in colouration as a line of the best-coloured Golden 
Pyrethrum ever could do. 
They are propagated easily enough from cuttings, 
either at the present time or in the autumn, and the 
two kinds named should be cultivated largely where 
plants of bright shades are wanted for cool greenhouse 
and conservatory decoration. Their colour, in many 
cases, will equal that of well-grown Crotons ; and being 
of a hardier nature, they are better subjects for the 
furnisher to handle, as they are not so likely to suffer 
from the effects of sudden changes as Crotons are. 
When gTown in pots for winter decoration, it will 
be as well to protect them from severe frost, as it will 
be sure to injure the foliage, and probably spoil the 
plants ; but by keeping them in a cool greenhouse tem¬ 
perature, they may be made serviceable plants for all 
kinds of decorative work during the winter season.— 
PRIMULA CORTUSOIDES 
SIEBOLDI. 
With the introduction of this grand hardy variety 
from Japan in 1865, we obtained a great improvement 
upon the old P. cortusoides, which was imported from 
Siberia in 1794. The variety in question is generally 
known under the name of P. amoena, which means 
lovely. Notwithstanding the receipt of this fine 
acquisition, it is far from being so common as it might 
be in the open border, but especially on rockeries, 
where, if planted in cool moderately moist soil, it 
thrives and flowers magnificently. Being thoroughly 
hardy, and perfectly deciduous, dying down about 
August, no fear need be entertained as to its safety. 
As its rhizomes run near the surface of the soil, care 
should be taken that they do not get exposed to the 
burning sun in summer, should they have happened to 
be laid bare by rains. The improved garden forms are 
perhaps less hardy, or, at all events, produce larger 
flowers if grown close to the glass in a cold frame, and 
should be treated in that way. For an illustration of 
six of these grand garden forms, see The Gardening 
World, vol. i., p. 617. Already the season of this 
fine Primula has commenced, and will last for several 
weeks. 
-- 
FLORICULTURE IN THE 
UNITED STATES. 
At the beginning of the present century, it is not 
probable that there were 100 florists in the United 
States, and their combined greenhouse structures could 
not have exceeded 50,000 sq. ft. of glass. There are 
now more than 10,000 florists distributed through 
every state and territory in the Union, and estimating 
5,000 sq. ft. of glass to each, the total area would be 
50,000,000 sq. ft., or about 1,000 acres of greenhouses. 
The value of the bare structures, with heating appa¬ 
ratus, at 60 cents, per square foot would be $30,000,000, 
while the stock of plants grown in them would not be less 
than twice that sum. The present rate of growth in 
the business is about 25 per cent, per annum, which 
proves that it is keeping well abreast of our most 
flourishing industries. 
The business, too, is conducted by a better class of 
men. No longer than thirty years ago it was rare to 
find any other than a foreigner engaged in commercial 
floriculture. The men had usually been private 
gardeners, who were mostly uneducated, and without 
business habits. But to-day, the men of this calling 
compare favourably in intelligence and business capacity 
with any mercantile class. 
Floriculture has attained such importance that it has 
taken its place as a regular branch of study in some of 
our agricultural colleges. Of late years, too, scores of 
young men in all parts of the country have been 
apprenticing themselves to the large establishments 
near the cities, and already some of these have achieved 
a high standing ; for the training so received by a lad 
from sixteen to twenty, better fits him for the business 
here than ten years of European experience, because 
much of what is learned there would prove worse than 
useless here. The English or German florist has here 
to contend with unfamiliar conditions of climate, and a 
manner of doing business that is novel to him. Again, 
he has been trained to more deliberate methods of 
working, and when I told the story a few years ago of 
a workman who had potted 10,000 cuttings in 2-in. pots 
in ten consecutive hours, it was stigmatised in nearly 
every horticultural magazine in Europe as a piece of 
American bragging. As a matter of fact this same 
workman, two years later, potted 11,500 plants in 
ten hours, and since then several other workmen 
have potted plants at the rate of 1,000 per hour all 
day long. 
Old World conservatism is slow to adopt improve¬ 
ments. The practice of heating by low-pressure steam 
will save in labour, coal and construction one-fifth of 
the expense by old methods, and nearly all the large 
greenhouse establishments in this country, whether 
private or commercial, have been for some years fur¬ 
nished with the best apparatus. But when visiting 
London, Edinburgh and Paris in 1885, I neither saw 
nor heard of a single case where steam had been used 
for greenhouse heating. The stress of competition here 
has developed enterprise, encouraged invention, and 
driven us to rapid and prudent practice, so that while 
labour costs twice as much as it does in Europe, our 
prices, both wholesale and retail, are lower. And yet 
I am not aware that American florists complain that 
their profits compare unfavourably with those of their 
brethren over the sea. 
Commercial floriculture includes two distinct branches, 
one for the production of flowers and the other for the 
production of plants. During the past twenty years 
the growth in the flower department of the business has 
outstripped the growth of the plant department. The 
increase in the sale of Rose buds in winter is especially 
noteworthy. At the present time it is safe to say 
that one-third of the entire glass structures in the 
United States are used for this purpose, many large 
growers having from two to three acres in houses 
Primula cortusoides Sieboldi. 
devoted to Roses alone, such erections costing from 
$50,000 to $100,000 each, according to [the style in 
which they are built. 
More cut flowers are used for decoration in the United 
States than in any other country, and it is probable 
that there are more flowers sold in New York than in 
London, with a population four times as great. In 
London and Paris, however, nearly every door-yard 
and window of city and suburb show the householder’s 
love for plants, while with us, particularly in the 
vicinity of New York (Philadelphia and Boston are 
better), the use of living plants for home decoration is 
far less general. 
There are fashions in flowers, and they continually 
change. Thirty years ago thousands of Camellia 
flowers were retailed in the holiday season for $1 each, 
while Rose buds would not bring a dime. Now, many 
of the fancy Roses sell at $1 each, while Camellia 
flowers go begging at 10 cents. The Chrysanthemum 
is now rivalling the Rose, as well it may ; and no 
doubt every decade will see the rise and fall of some 
floral favourite. But beneath these flitting fancies is 
the substantial and unchanging love of flowers that 
seems to be an original instinct in man, and one that 
grows in strength with increasing refinement. Fashion 
may now and again condemn one flower or another ; 
but the custom of neglecting flowers altogether will 
never prevail, and we may safely look forward in the 
expectation of an ever-increasing interest and demand, 
steady improvements in methods of cultivation, 
and to new and attractive developments in form, 
colour and fragrance .—Peter Henderson , in Garden 
and Forest. 
THE ORIGIN OF THE EDGED 
AURICULA.* 
On the 21st of April, 1886, it was my privilege, in 
discharge of an honourable duty, to address the Primula 
Conference on the “Origin of the Florist’s Auricula.” 
The horticultural philosophers, meeting here with the 
intent to mix wisdom with good cheer, having desired 
me to submit a thesis worthy of their solemn con¬ 
sideration, I have elected to discourse briefly on the 
same subject, but in the endeavour to treat it philo¬ 
sophically, sufficient for the present, perhaps, having 
been said upon the history of the flower. 
In my paper on the history of the flower, I have 
presented a series of evidences tending to the conclusion 
that the florist’s Auricula is of pure descent from the 
wild Auricula of the Alps, the Primula Auricula of the 
botanists. By the same method I have assigned the 
origin of the Alpine Auricula to the supposed hybrid 
Primula pubescens, and this, taken at the valuation of 
Professor Kerner, carries us back to P. Auricula and 
P. hirsuta, its reputed parents. Seeing that we cannot 
prove every proposition, and must allow opinions to 
have weight, I feel bound to say that although my 
proposals were warmly debated, they were not less 
warmly accepted by not a few even of those who, in the 
first instance, disputed them. Not to make a catalogue 
of names, it shall suffice now to say that Sir Joseph 
Hooker, Mr. J. G. Baker, and the Rev. F. D. Horner 
concur in my view of the parentage of our two great 
sections of garden Auriculas. It is no part of my plan 
on this occasion to enter further into that matter. 
Approaching the question in a philosophical frame of 
mind, I must beg of you to note that I have carried 
back the history of the edged Auricula to the year 
1734, and at that point the edge appears historically to 
melt into a series of stripes, for anterior to this day 
stripes were in favour and edges were unheard of. The 
first edged flower we heard of was called “ Honour and 
Glory,” as though Fate had emerged from the abstract 
to the actual, in order to have a hand in providing a 
name for the first representative of a new and glorious 
race of floral beauties. It is a matter of the highest 
importance in this connection that while we have in 
the old books figures of Auriculas, there is no sugges¬ 
tion either in figures or words of an edged Auricula 
until, in the “Flower Garden Displayed,” by Sir 
Thomas Moore, we have the characters of Honour and 
Glory plainly set before us, fixing the date of its origin 
as certainly not later than 1734. In Parkinson’s 
“Paradisus,” p. 227, are some figures of Auriculas in 
which stripes are suggested ; but the draughtsmanship 
is of so rough an order that it would be unsafe to found 
a critical opinion upon any of them. While, however, 
we may lament that the literary florists of the olden 
time were not careful of our interests in their floral 
portraiture, we are not without the aid of the facile 
pencil in respect of evidence of the kind of flower that 
gave birth to the edged Auricula. There were men 
who understood flowers in days when edged Auriculas 
were unknown, and when, possibly, the striped 
Auriculas had not long been invented. 
It is generally understood that for the Auriculas of 
the garden we are indebted to the Dutch florists, who 
made the first beginning in the domestication of tne 
savage of the Alps. And our debt to the Dutch painters 
is not less great for representations of the flowers as the 
Dutch had improved them, and these representations 
testify to the pure love of nature by which the Dutch¬ 
men of old time were animated both in their horti¬ 
cultural and pictorial arts. The artists of the real 
Dutch school have never been equalled at any time 
before or since in the directness of their interpretation 
of nature, and the reason of their prominence is seen 
when we compare contemporary works of other nations, 
say of the French for example, for the French did 
follow, as they thought, the wonderful contributions of 
the Netherlands to the joy of the world. The fact is, 
the Dutch painters of the olden time loved nature and 
lived as near to her as circumstances would allow, but 
their French disciples, in common with the disciples of 
other nations, loved themselves and lived from nature, 
and so failed of true interpretation. The one painted 
the thing as it was ; the other as, in his vain fancy, it 
ought to be. First in the throng of Dutchmen who have 
left on record the characters of the flowers of 200 years 
since, I will name David de Heem, Abraham Mignon 
and Jan Van Huysum. These, in their splendid groups 
of flowers, show us the Auriculas in the days of Gerard 
and Parkinson ; and there was a golden opportunity for 
* A paper read by Mr. Shirley Hibberd at a meeting of the 
Horticultural Club, held in April, 1187. 
