668 
THE GARDENING WORLD 
June 20, 1691. 
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The Auricula—Woolly Aphis. 
I know for certain of only one collection of Auriculas 
that is free from woolly aphis, and that is Mr. H. 
Wilson’s, of Halifax. He has had plants from my 
collection, and the insect has been a long time with me, 
but by dint of carefully washing every plant I sent 
before bringing it near his own Auriculas, he has 
prevented the appearance of woolly aphis. I think 
Mr. Wilson has only used a solution of soft-soap in 
rain water. At re-potting times, I have always a 
general engagement with this dirty insect, and always 
attack it when I see it above ground, but I have 
never succeeded in getting entirely rid of it. 
The late Mr. Pohlman, of Halifax, tried many 
experiments upon it ; successfully at last as regards 
the insect, but sometimes with such mischievous effect 
upon the condition of his plants, that the aphis was the 
lesser evil. This subterranean insect dislikes a close, 
heavy, and wet soil ; but we dare not keep Auriculas 
in that, merely for the sake of disgustiug the woolly 
aphis. Some of the most vigorous plants I have, or 
have seen, have had woolly aphis mostly at the roots, 
and yet it is not easy to believe that the plant and the 
insect are equally agreeable to each other. 
Any simple insecticide such as tobacco liquor or soft 
soap will destroy this aphis, provided that you can 
apply the solution to the insect’s naked body, but that 
is the difficulty. Its woolly surroundings are wonder¬ 
fully waterproof; and there is a greyish bloom on its 
vile body, perhaps a minute growth of wool or fur, that 
helps to keep the skin from getting wet. Paraffin oil 
is very searching, and will certainly saturate and kill 
the aphis through all its woolly clothing, but paraffin 
oil is very liable to injure the plants also. 
Woolly aphis thrives amazingly if Auriculas are 
allowed to get at all dry at the roots during summer. 
Soils of a light texture, and those made up withroughish 
leaf-soil or nodules of charcoal, are very favourable to its 
increase. If the plants are lightly potted, the insect 
will be found along the course of all the larger fibres, 
and about the main stem ; but in a pretty firm potting 
they affect almost entirely the roots at the sides and 
the bottom of the pot. A brush wetted with tobacco 
juice and soft-soap can be rubbed over groups of the 
aphis, so as to wet them through. Fibres among the 
drainage crocks, or anywhere underground where they 
are quite moist, seem to be not injured by the aphis ; 
but those newly breaking from the bottom of the plant 
at or near the ground level, certainly suffer if the insect 
is allowed upon them. 
I have not tried black soft-soap, but if Mr. Henwood 
has killed the insect with it, without the infinite pains 
of pursuing each one singly with a wet brush, the 
discovery is a most welcome one. I have no doubt he 
will kindly give his experience. I cannot tell, by the 
look of my plants, which have and which have not 
woolly aphis at the roots. Still it is an untidy insect, 
repugnant to one’s ideas of vegetable cleanliness, and 
we would gladly be rid of it. Whatever is used against 
it must penetrate to the insect itself in all its strong¬ 
holds, both in slight unevennesses and on the main stem, 
at the junction of fibres with the large roots, and at the 
axillary connection of main roots with the stem. 
Plants newly cleansed should be planted in pots 
purified by scalding and kept quite apart from those 
not yet so treated. All old soil should be instantly 
burnt, and I do not think it is wise to leave even the 
house or frame without a thorough cleansing before the 
plants are brought back. The insect is communicable 
by any stray strand of its wool floating about, or 
remaining undetected anywhere. A clean plant among 
infested ones will, in a few days, have woolly aphis deep 
amongst its roots, though the insect is seldom seen on its 
travels. There is also a winged form of it—I suppose, by 
its superior embellishments, the male—and this may trans¬ 
port the wingless female, as other aphides do. It is, 
without doubt, a difficult insect to grapple with, and if 
in its powers for mischief it were anything like green¬ 
fly, red-spider, thrips, or scale, it would indeed be a 
terror.— F. D. Horner, Lowfield , Burton-in-Lonsdale. 
Pelargonium, Zonal, Spotted Gem. 
This variety is noticeable from the fact that the deep 
pink lower petals of this variety have each a small spot 
of pale rose upon them, thus assuming a marking found 
in the show, decorative and fancy Pelargoniums. In 
going through Mr. Cannell’s houses of zonal Pelar¬ 
goniums one is struck by the singular distinctness of 
this variety. It was raised by Mr. Parker, and it in all 
probability marks a departure in the zonal Pelar¬ 
gonium of a somewhat startling character. Mr. Cannell 
foresees the time when these spots will run together and 
form a dense solid blotch as seen on the lower petals 
of the show Pansy. I am not sure that this is altogether 
desirable, but when the universal provider of the flori- 
cultural world makes up his mind to have a certain 
characteristic in a flower, somehow or other it comes 
about. The pink and rose go well together in this case, 
but in reference to the bright scarlet and crimson 
flowers the disc of one pure bright colour seems to be 
all that one can well wish for ; but then opinions differ 
in regard to such matters.— E. D. 
An Impromptu Lecture on the Tulip. 
The collection of Tulips I brought up from Manchester 
to the meeting of the Royal Horticultural Society, on 
the 9th inst., though small in number, yet proved very 
interesting indeed to some. I found myself occasionally 
delivering a little lecture to an interested few on the 
singular vegetable physiology of the Tulip. Questions 
were put, and 1 answered them as best I could ; the 
answers led to other questions, and I replied to the 
best of my knowledge, not without some perturbation 
of spirit, because by setting up as a lecturer on my 
own account I was practically springing upon the 
Council an unauthorised programme. A lecture had 
been arranged for later in the day, and I felt as if I 
was by accident substituting a lecture on Tulips, 
instead of the Rev. C. Wolley-Dod’s on Alpine plants. 
I was explaining to a few interested in the matter 
that the seedling Tulip, almost invariably at the first 
time of flowering, after its five or six years’ preparation 
for this important event, takes the self-coloured or 
breeder form, and I produced Mr. Barlow’s Glory of 
Stakehill as an illustration. “Dear me, is that so?” 
remarked an old and respected member of the Floral 
Committee, not exactly implying doubt as to the 
accuracy of my statement, but of wonder, and then 
he added, “ You should give a lecture on the Tulip at 
one of the meetings of the society.” Saades of Groom, 
Goldham, Hardy, Horner, and a hundred others who 
made the Tulip so glorious during the last half 
of the present century! I, a lecturer on the 
Tulip! I was shut up at once, and re¬ 
mained silent until another member of the Floral 
Committee, fastening upon one of Mr. J. W. Bentley’s 
Flemish Tulips—a long narrow-pointed petalled flower, 
with a yellow base, and foggy white ground, heavily 
flaked with carmine-rose—went into ecstasies over the 
beautiful combination of gold, rose, and scarlet, and 
said, “ That is what a Tulip grower should strive for.” 
I was struck dumb, my tongue clave to the roof of my 
mouth with astonishment. Here was a man, the 
secretary of one of the special florists’ societies in 
London, who lays claim to being a florist, actually 
recommending Tulip growers to cross their bizarres and 
roses ! I bottled up my surprise and indignation as 
best I could. I thought of the late Archbishop Magee, 
who, when dining on one occasion with an illustrious 
personage, had a plate of soup spilt over his archie- 
piscopal coat. Calmly wiping it off from his garment, 
he exclaimed, “ Would any layman like to say a few 
words ? ” I made a mute appeal to the bystanders to 
rebuke this erring and unenlightened florist as to Tulip 
matters, but no layman spoke. My unregenerate 
floral brother could see no beauty in the breeders ; he 
rather regarded them as floral bores—fugitive, wanting 
in constancy of character, and likely at any time to 
flash off into some other flowering manifestation. He 
admired the rich golden ground of a feathered William 
Wilson, but said, “ How much more attractive it would 
be if feathered with red, rose, or carmine!” He gloated 
over the colour of a flamed Mabel, but regretted the 
ground colour was not yellow instead of a sickly white. 
He thought the black base of a “ Darwin” breeder an 
excellent feature, and when I endeavoured to instil 
into his mind some correct Tulip teaching as to the 
fact that the purity of the base is one distinguishing 
feature of the florists’ Tulips—one gained after many 
years of patient and unremitting labour, during which 
the flower was gently led on from stage to stage of 
ascending steps to higher purity, he thought the florist 
was something akin to a booby for his pains, and like 
Naaman, the Syrian of old, he “turned and went 
away in a rage,” and there was an air of mournful pity 
on both sides, as he faced to the west and I to the east. 
I experienced considerable difficulty also in making 
some understand the difference between the bizarre and 
the rose ; and when I pointed out that the bizarre had a 
yellow and the rose and bybloemen a white base, they 
wanted to know further the difference between the 
byblcemen and rose. This I was able to demonstrate, 
though, I fear, with small success. Then followed 
expressions something akin to contemptuous pity that 
a Tulip fancier should be content to proceed along what 
they were pleased to designate as “narrow lines.” I 
said that the Tulip fancier thought the road along 
which he was travelling quite wide enough, that he 
had his four classes of Tulips—bizarres, roses and 
bybloemens with their feathered and flamed varieties, 
and breeders with their bizarre, rose and flamed 
classes; his seedlings, and his attempts to im¬ 
prove what he has ; and that so far from wishing to 
cross his bizarres and bybloemens, which would lead to 
endless confusion and fatal deterioration, he sought 
rather to improve these, each in their separate spheres, 
his aim being to lead on what is good to better, and 
eventually to best. 
Then my audience began to fall away. Probably 
they fancied I was talking in an unknown language, or 
that 1 was near to being a floral lunatic. 'Were I to 
question each member of the Floral Committee in 
reference to the Tulip, its types, divisions, and char¬ 
acteristics of each, I am very much afraid I could 
almost count upon the fingers of one hand those who 
possessed an intelligible knowledge of the flower. But 
that is their misfortune rather than their fault, for I 
know of no flower in the range of florists’ subjects so 
full of interest, and in the silent mystery of whose life 
there is bound up so many singular manifestations 
and transformations of such unusual and startling 
character.— E. D. 
Pansies. 
I presume that Mr. W. Dean is referring to me in his 
letter in your last number, as the “ writer ” on the 
“superiority of the West of England Pansies,” and I 
should have been very pleased to have received a 
schedule of the Midland Pansy Society. Mr. Dean was 
kind enough to invite me in his letter in The Gar¬ 
dening World, “a few weeks ago” as he says, viz., 
January 24th, to attend this show, and expressed a 
hope that I would induce Hooper, of Bath, and other 
southern growers to compete on the occasion. Well, 
unfortunately we have other fish to fry in the south on 
June 24th, when a far more important event tabes 
place in London, viz., the second exhibition of the 
National Pink Society (southern section), that is to.say, 
if any Pinks are in flower on that date. 
I should, however, most certainly dissuade any 
southern grower of Pansies from competing on that 
occasion in Birmingham. Is Mr. W. Dean really 
serious when he asks florists in the southern counties 
to submit Pansies for competition with northern 
growers, or even for exhibition, in the last week in 
June ? I suppose florists as well as other people may 
crack jokes at each other’s expense, but this is a very 
huge joke indeed. There would be just as much reason 
in our inviting our friends on the other side of the 
Tweed to show against us at the Botanic or at the Crystal 
Palace, in March. Mr. Dean says that “ the South 
and West of England seedlings are unknown in the 
Midlands,” but whatever may be the case now, I can 
assure him they were very well known ten years ago, and 
were regularly exhibited in Manchester. Mr. Dean also 
says that up to now Scottish Pansies have been ‘ all 
the go,’ and that they will continue to * take the cake,’ 
and orders will still go to Scotland unless the southern 
growers exhibit at Birmingham in the last week in June. 
Really, Sir, I did not expect such wild words from so 
true and respected a florist as Mr. Dean. I do not care 
twopence where the orders go to, but I like to see the 
best flowers win. Well, it so happens that we in 
London have already had an opportunity of contrasting 
English and Scottish Pansies at the Temple show. 
There were two exhibitors, side by side, one from 
Rothesay, the other from Bath, and any unprejudiced 
person would have awarded the southern flowers pre¬ 
ference over the northern. Three judges present told 
me that had the blooms been in competition they should 
have put the Bath Pansies first, so far as fancies were 
concerned. 
The main point of difference between myself and 
Mr. Dean is this : He is painfully desirous that every¬ 
one should be compelled to own that Scotch Pansies 
beat the world. I maintain that southern strains are 
quite as good, and that if you could bring both together 
at a time fair to both, the south would score as many 
wins as the north. But think how we are handicapped 
in the south ! I know of no more than three florists 
who grow Pansies fit for exhibition in the south and 
west of England, and I have not come across six 
amateurs. In Scotland and the Midlands growers may 
be numbered by the hundred. As I pointed out in my 
letter in The Gardening World of January 17th, 
