April 25, 1891. 
THE GARDENING WORLD- 
539 
A dozen very fine varieties will be found in Achieve¬ 
ment (Foster), Amethyst (Brehaut), Chief Secretary 
(Foster), Despot (Foster), Duke of Norfolk (Foster), 
Fortitude (Foster), Maid of Honour (Foster), Martial 
(Brehaut), Magnate (Foster), Outlaw (Foster), Sister of 
Mercy (Foster), and Virgin Queen (Smith).—A. D. 
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LORD TENNYSON’S FLOWERS. 
Now that the thrushes have begun their morning and 
evening song, and the girls are offering the bunches of 
wild Snowdrops for sale in the streets, our hearts begin 
to long for the spring flowers (never more prized than 
after this long and trying winter), and we begin to 
anticipate our coming pleasures by turning to the 
favourite passages that tell of our darlings. And who 
will bring the flowers of spring and summer before us 
as well as Lord Tennyson ? Who else has distinguished, 
with suitable epithet, one wayside flower from another, 
and given to his exquisite landscapes the true finishing 
flower-touch ? Other poets have sung in honour of 
flowers : Alfred Austin has celebrated the Primrose in 
charming verse ; Wordsworth has immortalised the 
Lesser Celandine; Burns has glorified the “bonnie 
g em ”—the Daisy—and thus re-echoed the praises of 
old Chaucer ; but none has been at once so catholic in 
taste, so accurate in localisation, so exquisite in selection 
of epithet as the Laureate. This love of florvers is 
from the beginning ; it is as evident in the earliest 
poems as in the latest; it is charming everywhere. In 
the early poems—published sixty years ago—we have 
the flowers in the old-fashioned Lincolnshire garden 
drooping under the action of the autumn frosts : 
Heavily hangs the broad Sunflower, 
Over its grave i’ the earth so chilly ; 
Heavily hangs the Hollyhock, 
Heavily hangs the Tiger Lily. 
Perhaps the very garden in which, after his departure, 
Unwatched the garden bough shall sway, 
The tender blossom flutter down, 
Unloved that Beech will gather brown, 
This Maple burn itself away : 
Unloved the Sunflower, shining fair, 
Kay round with flame her disk of seed, 
And many a Kose-Carnation feed 
With summer spice the humming air. 
And around, or below, where the great Fenland swept 
away to the great sea : 
Far through the marish, green and still, 
The tangled watercourses slept, 
Shot over with purple, and green, and yellow, 
and with 
The silvery marish flowers that throng 
The desolate pools and creeks among. 
And with these we must quote, as characteristic of 
the scenery among which his earlier years were passed, 
“ two of the most beautiful and melancholy lines in 
our language, a3 Henry Kingsley truly calls them : 
When from the dry, dark wold the summer 
airs blow cool, 
On the Oat-grass, and the Sword-grass, and 
the Bulrush in the pool. 
The meadow and marsh flowers are chiefly spoken of 
in the “ May Queen ” : 
And by the meadow trenches blow the 
faint sweet cuckoo flowers, 
And the wild marsh Marigold shines like fire 
in swamps and hollows grey. 
What a gleam of first May-time those two lines bring 
with them ! One can see the water meadows of our 
Dorsetshire Stour, or of the Salisbury Avon, winding 
to and fro from Ring wood to Christchurch, where the 
wide moist meadows are on fire with marsh Marigold. 
In that lovely “Dirge,” how he delights to bring 
together over the quiet grave, “ the bramble roses, 
faint and pale,” the gold-eyed king-cups fine,” “the 
frail blue bells,” the rare broidry of the purple clover,” 
till, as Shelley said, “making one in love with death 
to think one should be buried in so sweet a place.” 
Almost always the wild flowers are spoken of. In 
the spring “ by ashen roots the violets blow,” a line 
which once guided us to a lovely clump of white Violets 
after a fruitless search elsewhere. Following Shakes¬ 
peare, he thinks how, when Arthur Hallam lies at 
rest in quiet Clevedon, “ Of his ashes may be made the 
violet of his native land.” So Shakespeare, of Ophelia 
“From her fair and unpolluted flesh may violets 
spring.” But both our poets had been anticipated_ 
Non e manibus illis, 
Non e tumulo, fortunataque favilla 
Nascuntur violae ? 
The Orchis, “the foxglove spire with its dappled 
bells,” “the little speedwell’s darling blue,” “deep 
tulips dashed with fiery dew,” “laburnums, dropping 
wells of fire,” each in turn recalling some pleasant spot, 
it may be in damp spring copse, or meadow, or by 
sunny bank, or in sloping garden. The glorious 
reaches of blue when the Hyacinths carpet the ground 
are specially noted, for we read how Lancelot and 
Guinevere 
Rode under groves that looked a paradise 
Of blossom, over sheets of Hyacinth 
That seemed the heavens upbreaking tliro’ 
the earth. 
That is a bit of forest. We saw the very place last 
spring, quite close to Queen’s Bower, near Brockenhurst, 
where, beneath stately Beeches, the ground was covered 
with Blue-bells, as we call them. 
The mention of the delicate Wind-flower softens the 
rugged speech of the wild “Northern Farmer” as he 
tells how the keeper was shot dead, and lay on his face 
“down i’ the woild enemies,” a wonderfully pathetic 
touch, as it shows you the dead man with the delicate 
petals of the flowers whispering round the motionless 
head. 
Do you want a broad summer landscape, with the scent 
of summer and the promise of autumn ? Here it is :— 
When summer’s hourly mellowing change 
May breathe with many Roses sweet 
Upon the thousand waves of Wheat 
That ripple round the lonely grange. 
Can you not see the “waves of shadow pass over the 
Wheat,” and smell the fragrance of the wind that has 
travelled over the many Roses ? Surely some one has 
painted that “grey old grange” amid its far waving 
corn ! 
The simple happy cottage flowers, “ traveller’s joy,” 
“honeysuckle,” “ rosy sea of gillyflowers,” “close-set 
robe of jasmine,” “lily-avenue,” and so on, are noted, 
one by one, in a pretty passage in “Aylmer’s Field,” 
describing the houses of Sir Aylmer’s tenantry. 
But the most splendid use of the common flowers is 
in the finest of all his pieces on public events, the “ Ode 
on the Death of the Duke of Wellington ” : 
Not once, or twice, in our rough island story, 
The path of duty was the way to glory : 
He that walks it, only thirsting 
For the right, and learns to deaden 
Love of self, before his journey closes, 
He shall find the stubborn Thistle bursting 
Into glossy purples, which outredden 
All voluptuous garden Roses. 
The Thistle referred to is the lovely purple-headed 
one that grows on the down sides, with a more silvery 
leaf and a far more “ glossy purple ” than the common 
roadside sort. The use of this as an emblem of the un¬ 
expected reward of duty honestly performed, is one 
of the most telling selections in English poetry. 
The way in which the commonest flower depends for 
its existence on laws the most profound and far reach¬ 
ing is brought before us by the last quotation we must 
make : 
Flower in the crannied wall, 
I pluck you out of the crannies : 
Hold you here, root and all, in my hand, 
Little flower ; but if I could understand 
What you are, root and all, and all in all, 
I should know what God and man is. 
— W. K. Gill, Eversley, Poole, in Science Gossip. 
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THE DRACiENA. 
Amongst the many decorative plants which enhance 
the beauty of our stoves, the Dracaena stands pre¬ 
eminent, proving to be one of the most useful both as a 
table plant and also when associated with other 
subjects in groups. Dracsenas are easily increased, and 
a goodly number should be raised every year. Plants 
that have grown a considerable height and lost their 
lower leaves should be headed down, and the top put 
into a small pot and treated as a cutting, placing the 
same in a close case, where it will soon root. The other 
part of the stem should be cut into lengths of 1 in., 
and inserted amongst sandy peat with a covering of 
sand on the top. The eyes will soon push forth leaves, 
and when in a fit state they should be re-potted into 
small pots amongst a light compost of loam, sand, and 
a sprinkling of bone dust. Pot firmly, and place them 
close up to the glass in a shady part of the stove till 
they have taken to the new compost. 
As the plants progress, care must be taken not to let 
them get pot-bound. Immediately the roots touch the 
sides of the pot, move them into 5-in. pots, using a 
similar compost, with the addition of a little soot mixed 
through the material. I have found soot of much value 
in the cultivation of this class of plants. As the days get 
warmer, growth will be more active, and the cultivator 
will have to keep a close look out, and in case of thrips 
making their appearance, a free use of the syringe 
applied on the underside of the leaves will keep them 
in check. 
Some of the strongest-growing sorts should be potted 
on into 8-in. pots, as they show themselves much better 
when treated so. They are benefited through the 
summer by a slight shading, a3 they do not enjoy such 
bright sunshine as Crotons. If good examples are 
desired, liquid manure must be used freely, as they do 
not care about their regimen being stinted. Useful 
sorts are to be found in the following :—Angusta, 
Baptistii, Gracilis, Hybrids, Stiepherdii, Superba, and 
Terminalis.— W. Angus, Dumfriesshire. 
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meltings ffrmtt ilp 
of jSntuciL 
—— 
Male and Female Asparagus. — Mr. Green 
made some observations to determine the relative 
differences in yield between male and female, or berry- 
bearing Asparagus plants. The observations were 
made during two seasons. The male plants gave an 
average of about 50 per cent, more yield than the female, 
and the shoots were also larger and the crop earlier. 
The differences in yield were greater in the early part 
of the season than in the latter part. Male plants can 
be secured by division of old plants, or better by the 
selection from two-year-old seedlings of such as do not 
bear seed. Growers have asserted for some time that 
there is a difference between the two kinds of plants in 
profitableness, and Mr. Green has done well to give us 
the exact figures.— Bulletin of the Ohio Experiment 
Station. [The flowers of Asparagus in this country are 
generally hermaphrodite, so that we have not the 
opportunity of taking advantage of the male plants. 
Curiously enough, Strawberries are often polygamous 
in America, a circumstance which does not affect us in 
Britain.—E d.] 
Aquatic Nature of Musk.— Those who have 
seen Mimulus luteus where it has become naturalised 
in this country, know that it is partial to shallow 
ditches and the margins of streams, where its roots are 
always in the water. In gardens it is often treated as 
a hardy or half-hardy annual, whereas it is quite 
hardy under conditions natural to it. Plants, how¬ 
ever, often die wholesale during the winter, and are 
therefore reckoned tender. Musk (Mimulus moschatus) 
in dry soil often behaves in the same way. The con¬ 
ditions, however, under which it will live, even during 
such a winter as the past, may well teach the empiric 
a lesson. Early last summer an amateur cut off a 
quantity of the stems of a patch that, from its rampant 
growth, had outgrown the space allotted it. Some of 
them were put in a jug filled with water. They 
emitted roots, grew vigorously, and flowered all the 
summer. "When autumn came, the jug containing the 
musk and water was placed in a cold frame, where it 
stood all the winter. The water in the jug became a 
solid mass of ice, yet neither was the jug burst or the 
Musk injured, judging from the promising appearance 
which it now presents. The bottom of the jug is full 
of stout, fleshy rhizomes, which will no doubt produce 
vigorous growth as the season advances. Now, all this 
amount of growth the plant has been able to extract 
from the impurities of the water, and what must have 
fallen into it accidentally from the impurities of a 
.London atmosphere, as the jug during summer stood 
on the sill of a window outside. This should show 
that the Musk is adapted for an aquatic habitat.— J. F. 
Effects of Pressure on the Respiration of 
PI ants. —Johannsen has recently made some interesting 
experiments on the effect of supplying plants with 
oxygen, first at ordinary atmospheric pressure, and 
then at pressures of two, four and five atmospheres, the 
activity of vegetation being measured by the quantity 
of carbonic acid evolved. At first this increases as the 
pressure of the oxygen increases, but the increase is 
only temporary ; the respiration gradually diminishes, 
more and more quickly as the pressure is greater, and 
the plants soon die. The more curious result is that 
which follows when the plant is subjected to the action 
of oxygen at a high pressure for short periods, and the 
excess of pressure then removed. The plant thus 
restored to the action of ordinary pressure, shows a 
great increase of respiration, amounting to as much as 
50 per cent, in the case of Maize. The cause of this 
after-action is still a mystery.— Science Gossip. 
