492 
THE GARDENING WORLD 
April 4, 1891. 
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The Auricula. 
The florists’ Auricula, especially in the green, grey, 
and white-edged sections, is at present decidedly behind 
time. The seifs, as their habit is, are more forward. 
“ E. D.” thinks it “quite impossible to have flowers 
sufficiently advanced by April 21st, unless with the aid 
of artificial heat.” But the truth is, that “ until you 
know,” it is simply impossible to prophesy either one 
way or the other. However, I may say that the 
natural spring impulse of this plant, quickened by 
the lengthening daylight, which happily does not 
depend on the weather, and a genial month of April, 
would be such a threefold stimulus if happily combined, 
that the Auricula would come pretty well up to time 
yet, though when that is limited to one fixed day, we 
cannot expect every head of bloom to be at its best at 
any one and the same moment. 
I suspect that something is still misunderstood 
here and there in the south, respecting “ aid of artifi¬ 
cial heat ” in connection with Auricula culture. I 
have never thought that every grower in those regions 
has ever grasped its practical meaning and application. 
Heat for the Auricula is not as heat for the royal 
Orchid, or the lowly Cucumber, either as to duration 
or intensity. I have said as much often in the 
presence of mistaken literary friends, and trust I may 
not be thought tiresome in saying it here. I think 
Mr. Dean may mean, that if only he had command of 
artificial heat for Auriculas, he might anticipate 
triumphal entries at the Southern show of the National 
Auricula Society, but without this he is going to be 
literally left out in the cold. 
Now, as the plants are at present, heat could not be 
used without harmful consequences. It never is used 
at this stage of growth by any one at once conversant 
with the nature of the plant, and unwilling to tax its 
powers prematurely. The Auricula will not and can¬ 
not be “forced,” except into a miserable failure. I 
have never seen the Newcastle Auricula Show in the 
early days of April ; but if the plants have had “ the 
aid of artificial heat,” in the common sense of forcing, 
I should expect to see a good many of the flowers poorly 
coloured, flimsy, under-sized, and not even so much 
as well expanded. I have seen it tried, and I know 
this is the result. This would be the waking reality of 
any golden dreams of artificial heat for his Auriculas 
that may have charmed the slumbers of “ K. D.” 
Eather may he rejoice that our instrumentality, 
delicate in its application, and dangerous in its misuse, 
either as to time or intensity, is beneficently out of 
reach. 
While stems are rising, and buds are forming, the 
Auricula cannot be forced to answer any purpose worth 
answering. Artificial heat cannot form real growth of 
stem or tissue of petal; it can only attenuate. An 
Auricula bud that even in the shade cf a north aspect 
would in its own time develop into a bold flower, full 
of substance and colour, if coverings be used effectively 
against frost, would under artificial heat in its early 
stages of growth merely attempt a ghastly pale 
expansion of what tissues it possessed into a puny 
short-lived semblance of what an Auricula should be. 
No doubt “E. D.” may lose time through lack of 
vivifying springtide sunshine in his north house, yet 
unless there are obstacles east and west of it, there 
should by now be some cheer of morning and afternoon 
sunbeams on fine days. 
Be this as it may, artificial heat would be of no 
sound use as the plants are now. The only thing 
advisable is to cover the roof of the house as warmly as 
possible on nights of frost or bitter wind, say from dusk 
to dawn. Like the Tulips, it may be noticed that buds 
of the Auricula do a great deal of their work during the 
night following, if I may thus curiously express it. 
Hence to both the extreme value of “growing nights,” 
of which, so far, we have had hardly any. 
Perhaps I may here state once more the only and 
delicate conditions under which I have ever either used 
heat with good effect, or would recommend it to be 
used. For Auriculas, it may imply the sacrifice of a 
night’s rest—not that I have ever grudged them that; 
but applied heat will require close watching, not only 
lest it rise too high, but in case the night should change 
to warmth enough without it. If used at all, it must 
be so gentle that the plants must, as it were, not know 
of it, but only feel as if the night were a kindly 
“growing” one, of a spring temperature of 45° to 50°. 
When there is a sharp frost of 10°, or as I have known 
it, of 18° in mid-April, the expanding flowers, par¬ 
ticularly of edged Auriculas, will suffer il frost has its 
own way in the house. I would at all times, whether 
for my Auriculas or Orchids, rather secure, when 
possible, a proper temperature by outside coverings than 
by internal heating at night; but of these so different 
plants I find the Auricula by far the more touchy and 
susceptible to artificial heat. Only just at the last, 
with almost expanded pips, and when by no other 
means could the temperature be kept above freezing, do 
I think Auriculas should be troubled by this “aid” ; 
most certainly not in March when stems and buds are 
sought. 
As I write, this night (29th) there are 10° of frost, 
and the Auriculas have only borrowed from the Orchid 
houses the light shading used to temper brilliant sun¬ 
shine. 
Since I came here, seven years ago, the Auricula houses 
have had no heating apparatus attached to them, for the 
simple reason that I have had help enough without it. 
They are the old lean-to houses ; but besides enjoying 
a full south aspect, they lie sheltered from north and 
east, and the back wall is built close up to the solid 
earth behind, which is 9 ft. above the ground level in 
the garden, and is never icy cold. I find that I can 
keep the frost out in the spring by protecting the top 
and side glass with the sheets of sacking which are the 
winter night-dress of the Orchid houses ; while for 
spring frosts the Orchids, warm and cool ones, are safe 
under their sun-shade day covers, without excessively 
heated pipes. 
So long as the Auricula buds are within the calyx, or 
petals closed over the anthers, I have found them 
uninjured by spring frosts; but when flowers are 
naturally nearly expanded, I have known sharp frosts 
to penetrate sufficiently through bare glass to “set ” or 
paralyse the buds. 
A similar effect will follow too high an artificial heat 
by night, or sun heat without ventilation by day. The 
young flowers will be equally checked by such opposite 
means of extremes—the one inducing cramp or floral 
rheumatics, and the other enervating the vitality of 
the tube, which will suddenly assume the complexion 
of an old flower ; while the pollen is hastily developed 
and perhaps shed upon the stigma, in which case the 
flower will die at or near the stage at which impregna¬ 
tion has taken place. 
I should be glad to think-that I have made one 
whit more clear the use and abuse of artificial heat 
for the Auricula. I am willing to hope so, but 
perhaps, as the boy said when writing home to his 
parents about the school milk and water, “This is 
indeed weakness !” 
However, applied heat is a very delicate matter here, 
a means only safe in his hands who will watch over 
his plants under it as he would a precious life at some 
momentous crisis. It never should be employed to 
hurry Auriculas into bloom, but only to keep expanding 
buds from paralysing cold, and not even then to an 
untimely temperature—not even at all if by any 
advantage of situation, or by any gentle means such as 
outside coverings for the glass, the temperature can be 
kept 8° or 10° above freezing or a trifle less. 
From what I hear elsewhere and see at home, I am 
not sure that the Auricula bloom will be abundant, 
though it yet may prove to be a refined one, a quality 
far above quantity in the Auricula. A huge plant, 
with leaves less like those of the bear than of the ass or 
elephant, with a crushing crowd of pips, of which many 
must be cut out to avoid confusion, and the disfigure¬ 
ment wrought by it, is not the Auricula in her distinct 
and beauteous clear cut outlines, where every feature in 
a lovely face is unsullied and unobscured by contact 
with its fellows, to their mutual ruin. The stain of 
one flower’s meal upon another flower’s velvet is 
indelible. 
The best pips are generally the outer ones, and in an 
overgrown plant these are often big to coarseness, 
oblong instead of circular, hopelessly crooked, and are 
ripped, choked with an abnormal growth, half calyx, 
half petal in the throat, goggle eyed, or apt to run out 
of all symmetry with age. These woeful results of a 
cultural intemperance may be removed for the sake of 
more shapely buds in the middle, but these inner pips 
are innately of weaker properties, and the innermost 
frequently useless. In edged flowers they are apt to be 
much too heavy in the proportion of the body colour 
to the edge, becoming still more so with age, the 
“body waning out” as we call it, by reason of that 
part of the corolla growing more than the part on 
which the “edge” is laid. 
In the seifs the outer pips of an elephantine (or 
asinine) plant are often misshapen and unmanageably 
rough, and the innermost ones a petal short of a 
complete unbroken outline. I much prefer the healthy 
plant of stout moderate size, large enough for one good 
truss, and no attempt at more—a plant that does not 
smother its young truss in rampant foliage, but 
surrounds it with just strong enough leaves to supply 
it with their life-giving functions, making it, and not 
themselves, their chief object in life. Such a plant 
may not have half the bold promise of the colossal one 
in February and March, but more performance in 
April. There may be less to cut at, but less also 
—perhaps nothing— that will need it. 
“ E. D.” mentions a plant of my namesake that has 
not moved for three March weeks ! It is very unlike 
any healthy Auricula to remain stationary at such a 
time ; I do not see how it could, in the very worst 
March weather, unless something ails it. Except a 
few seifs, all my plants are late and slow for the time 
of year—many edged ones not here yet—and I think of 
April 21st with the calm philosophy and resignation 
that if they are not there, they will not be ! 
All plants that I have seen, have, like my own, lost 
more foliage last winter than I have ever known them 
drop before. 
Here they were hard frozen for seven weeks or more, 
and got drier than I would have had them, only there 
was no help for it. 
Very many trusses are short of pips for the size of the 
plant, as it was before the frost, and I take it that an 
abnormal loss of foliage would have its effect upon the 
truss, which the seemingly sleeping, motionless leaves 
have the office and responsibility of making in the heart 
of the plant during winter. 
As to whether the Auricula will be in bloom in time 
(i.e., our time) we must leave as contentedly as we 
may to nature’s efforts, and our own best care.— 
F. D. Horne?', Lowfields, Burton-in-Lonsdale. 
- — 
DAHLIA SHOW AT SYDNEY, 
N.S.W. 
Our Dahlia Show is now a thing of the past, having 
been held on Wednesday and Thursday, February 18th 
and 19 th. It was our first exhibition in the noble 
Centennial Hall, a building well adapted for this pur¬ 
pose, with perhaps two exceptions. The light during 
the day is none of the best, and the immense height of 
the structure renders the possession of foliage plants of 
considerable dimensions to relieve it a sine qud non. 
Unfortunately for the very fine display of cut flowers, 
Dahlias especially, the former had to be tolerated and 
the latter were not in evidence, for the plant classes 
were weak, very weak from an Old Country point of 
view. 
The Dahlias, however, and the fruit were the features 
of the show ; the former would have well held their own 
in an English exhibition, some blooms being remark¬ 
ably fine. The premier bloom of the exhibition, in the 
opinion of the j udges, was Mrs. Gladstone, the second 
best, Eclipse. Between the two there was little to 
choose ; had they been in the old country, however, the 
positions would have been reversed—-at least such is my 
opinion. Here the rapid development of the bloom has 
a tendency to open out the petals a little too much to 
satisfy the taste of one who takes for his model a perfect 
Old Country flower. Eclipse does not apparently suffer 
to such an extent in this respect as Mrs. Gladstone, but 
the colour and size possibly of this latter led up to the 
award. An Old Country gardener would have been 
surprised most at the extent and variety of the fruits 
shown, the size of some examples — of Apples 
especially — from an English standpoint being mar¬ 
vellous. 
As it may interest you to know what this fertile soil 
and favoured climate produces in the way of fruit, I 
need only mention a few, the list being too extensive to 
give the whole. All are grown in the open, Grapes, 
Citron fruits (very many varieties), Apples, Pears, 
Peaches, Nectarines, Plums, Damsons, Figs, Quinces, 
Medlars, &c. Passion fruit, Pomegranates, Eock and 
Water Melons, Guavas, Mangos, Banana, Pine Apples, 
Mulberry, Blackberry, Shaddock, Lime, &c. The list 
you will see is a good one, though only about half told, 
for many hundreds of dishes in all were staged. Horti- 
culturally the exhibition was a decided success ; it will 
probably be several years before it is so financially—our 
education not being yet complete, and our efforts rarely 
appreciated as they might be by the public generally. 
All, however, who did come were delighted with the 
show, and will probably again put in an appearance, 
and bring their friends too, we hope, on all subsequent 
occasions. 
A friend of mine, whose initials (C. B.) are not quite 
unknown in your columns, was to the fore with his 
