April 2, 1892. 
THE GARDENING WORLD. 
487 
foots is getting dry. If it becomes too dry the plant 
soon hangs out signals of distress. When a plant 
reaches this stage the pot should be stood in a bowl 
of water, and allowed to remain there until the 
whole of the soil has become thoroughly saturated. 
When the soil in a pot becomes dry it contracts, and 
it becomes drawn away from the sides of the pot, 
and if water be poured upon it, instead of soaking 
into the soil it runs down between it and the pot and 
becomes wasted. That is why it is I advise you to 
stand the pot of a very dry plant in a bowl of water 
so that the soil within it may become thoroughly 
saturated. 
So much depends upon the character of the plant, 
the extent of its roots, the size of the pot in which it 
is growing, the season of the year, and whether the 
plant is in vigorous growth or not. Plants are like 
human beings in this respect, that they want drink 
when they are thirsty, but unlike too many human 
beings they are content with water, and have no 
unnatural craving for moisure when not needing it. 
In hot, sunny, drying weather plants may require 
water two or three times a day, if exposed to the sun 
and drying influences. If the weather be dull and 
damp, they will not dry nearly so rapidly and there¬ 
fore do not require so much water. If the plant be 
a strong rank grower, it will take up more water 
than one that is weakly and does not grow so rapidly. 
So with roots, if a plant has filled its pot with roots, 
it will require more water than one that has fewer 
roots. In a small pot the soil becomes dry much 
more rapidly than in a large one ; in spring and 
summer, when plants are growing vigorously, they 
need more water than in autumn and winter when 
they are slowly sinking to their rest. It is a good 
plan when during summer pot plants are thoroughly 
exposed on a window sill, to stand them in saucers, 
and if a little water is in the saucer no harm will be 
done; rather, the plant will draw it all up by means 
of what is knowm as “ capillary attraction.” 
An old friend of mine who wrote a tract on window 
gardening, gave a test by which it can be ascertained 
if a plant be dry. He thus addresses his readers by 
way of illustrating his point:—"But you may 
possibly say, yes, it is all very well for you to say 
‘ When it’s dry,’ but how am I to know when it is 
dry. By a very simple process. Now don’t try to 
shove your finger down the side of the pot, for you 
will do more harm than good if you do. Just for 
example, tap with your knuckle the pots at this 
moment on your window-sill, and if you have an ear 
for any more refined music than Scotch bagpipes 
you will detect a difference in the sound produced. 
One pot will ring with a bit of bell-like music, that’s 
dry ; another knock as you like returns nothing but 
a dead leaden sound, that’s wet, there is no music in 
its soul, and between these two you will find various 
cadences. Give them language, and a practised ear 
receives in reply to his tap the following four 
answers:—‘ Water now' rings out cheerily; ‘To¬ 
morrow ' being less responsive ; ’ Day after ’ flat ; 
while ’ Wait ’ is the very flat and decided response 
in the fourth case. Try it for yourself ; if you fail 
in detecting the variations at once, try again. We 
have all heard of the language of flowers, a mighty 
sentimental idea; here is a lesson in the language of 
roots, at least thoroughly practical.” So wrote and 
taught the friend from whom I have quoted. 
Frost and Cold 
have to be guarded against, as a matter of course 
plants grown in windows are liable to get frozen. 
To guard against this possibility it will be advisable 
to remove the plants from the window sill during 
the night, at any rate when the weather promises to 
be severely frosty. If there has been no fire during 
the day, remove the plants to the further side of the 
room, and do not replace them till you are assured 
that the danger is past; but should the frost come 
in the night without warning and freeze the plants— 
what is to be done ? do this —place them in a dark 
part of the room, or in the washhouse or a closet 
and sprinkle them with water, cold water mind, 
hot water would be death to them. Let the process 
of thawing be gradual, nature is never in a hurry. 
In autumn and winter, plants may be said to be at 
their annual rest, and they need very little water 
indeed then. Plants are killed more by frost through 
their roots than through their heads or branches, 
therefore the drier the soil is kept during the winter, 
the less danger is there of harm from frost. But the 
soil must not be dry enough to cause the plants to 
shrivel.— R. D. 
VARIEGATED PLANTS. 
These at the present time are very numerous both 
among exotics as well as indigenous plants. Many 
of them are peculiarly interesting on account of their 
varied markings and combinations of colour, which 
in many cases are exquisitely beautiful. These 
properties are found in some plants of ordinary type, 
and in many cases they may be perpetuated if 
ordinary care be taken to secure that object. Rather 
more than four years ago I had the pleasure in send¬ 
ing you examples of a variegated Brussels-sprout, of 
which you spoke favourably. From that time I 
have been enabled to perpetuate this, to me, pleasing 
freak of Nature, and, to do this with success, my 
practice has been to pot up a few plants and place 
them under glass. By this means I obtain an early 
bloom, which enables me to fertilize the flowers 
by hand at a time when Nature’s agents are 
scarcely in active employment, and the Brassica 
tribe are not in a blooming state in the open 
ground. 
Of course in doing this I have not to consider the 
matter commercially, my object being not to save 
a quantity of seed, but rather to secure what seed I 
want from my pet plants in as pure form as it is 
possible to do so. With this I send you a little 
plant, showing my mode of procedure, which is to 
take from the most striking the tops of the plants 
late in the autumn ; this season it was on the 6th 
December, last. I select those tops from the 
smallest plants, the length of the cutting being about 
4 in. long. These are inserted in cocoa-nut fibre and 
coarse sand on bottom heat, and the rooted cuttings 
are ready for potting in about three weeks from the 
time that they are inserted, and the plants being kept 
in small pots very little room is required from first 
to last in blooming and perfecting the maturation of 
the seed, more especially should the roots be allowed 
to find food from some material on which the pots 
are placed .—George Fry, Lewisham. 
-—i-- 
SCHIZOCODON SOLDANELLOIDES. 
Great interest was attached to the discovery and 
importation of Shortia galacifolia to this country, 
Now another closely allied member of the same 
family has been imported from Japan, and is believed 
to be flowering for the first time in England. It is 
the subject of this note, and was collected on the 
Sulphur Mountains, Japan, by Captain Alfred 
Torrens (gr. Mr. W. Pascoe), Baston Manor, 
Hayes. Some of the natives were selling bunches 
of it, and Capt. Torrens upon making enquiry as to 
its whereabouts soon found plenty of it on hedge 
banks at an altitude of about 3,500 ft. The plants he 
collected were put in pieces of Bamboo stems and 
brought home, but only three of them survived, one 
of which has been flowering for some time past, and 
a plate of it is being prepared for the Botanical 
Magazine. 
The leaves are suborbicular or broadly ovate, 
toothed, leathery, netted and of a dark shining 
green. The young leaves are more glossy, and 
slightly tinted with red. The scape is about 2% in. 
high and bears a solitary, slightly drooping, some¬ 
what bell-shaped flower, bearing a considerable 
resemblance at first sight to a Soldanella of the 
European Alps. About the middle of the scape 
is a solitary bract and three others under the calyx ; 
the segments of the latter are oblong and blunt. 
The corolla is cut nearly to the base into five, deeply 
and irregularly lacerated, and imbricating segments. 
The fringes are blush or almost white, but the throat 
is rosy pink with darker, radiating veins. The five 
prominent stamens are inserted at the base of the 
sinus of the lobes, while lower down are five linear, 
ciliate scales or staminodia. This latter character 
serves to separate Schizocodon from Shortia. The 
generic name refers to the fringes of the corolla. 
There are only six genera and eight or nine species 
belonging to the Diapensiaceae, of which the plant 
under notice is a member. Taken together they 
seem to represent a race of plants that was at one 
time more common than they are now, judging from 
the widely scattered representatives in both hemi¬ 
spheres of the world. There would seem to be 
some uncertainty as to whether there is one or two 
species of Schizocodon. That under notice was 
exhibited by the owner at the Crystal Palace on the 
26th of last month. The habit is precisely like that 
of Shortia 
THE STRAWBERRY 
TOMATO. 
Physalis pubescens is the common Strawberry 
I omato of seedsmen (the Erdbeer Tomato of the 
Germans), the Dwarf Cape Gooseberry, Golden Husk 
Tomato, and the improved Ground Cherry. It is a 
low plant, trailing flatly upon the ground, or some¬ 
times ascending to the height of a foot. The leaves 
are rather thin and nearly smooth, more or less regu¬ 
larly and prominently notched with blunt teeth, 
blowers small (g in. or less long), bell-shaped, the limb 
or border erect and whitish-yellow, the throat marked 
with five large brown spots ;• anthers yellow. The 
husk is smooth or nearly so, thin and paper-like, 
prominently 5-angled and somewhat larger than the 
small, yellow, sweetish, and not glutinous fruit. The 
plant is very prolific, and the fruits are considerably 
earlier than in the other species. When ripe, the 
fruits fall, and if the season is ordinarily dry they 
will.often keep in good condition upon the ground 
for three or four weeks. The fruits will keep nearly 
all winter if put away in the husks in a dry 
chamber. They are sweet and pleasant, with a 
little acid, and they are considerably used for 
preserves, and sometimes for sauce. The plant is 
worthy a place in every home garden. It is grown 
more or less by small gardeners near the large 
cities, and the fruits are often seen in the winter 
markets. The chief objection to the plant is its 
prostrate habit of growth, which demands a large 
amount of ground for its cultivation. In good 
soil it will spread four feet in all directions if not 
headed in, but as we ordinarily grow it, the 
plants are set in rows three or four feet apart and 
two or three feet apart in the row. We have 
made repeated attempts to hybridize this species 
with others, and vice versa, but always without 
success. This Physalis has been long in cultivation. It 
was figured by Dillenius in 1774, in his account of 
the plants growing in Dr. Sherard’s garden at 
Eltham, England.— L. H. Bailey, Cornell University. 
ARDENING SllSCELLANY. 
AZALEA PRINCESS OF WALES. 
White flowers are always in request, and new 
varieties of various subjects possessing the desired 
colour are continually being brought forward. A 
few years ago a great deal was said about Azalea 
Deutsche Perle, and the value of the plant has come 
quite up to expectation. Now another double white 
variety is in the field, namely, Princess of Wales, 
which is quite distinct from the now w'ell-known 
sort. The flowers are pure white and double with¬ 
out any undue crowding of the segments of the 
corolla, but instead of the latter being even and flat, 
they are finely crisped or undulated, reminding us 
of what we see in some of the regal section of 
Pelargoniums, but much finer than that of Madame 
Thiburt and others originating from it. The variety- 
under notice has been flowering for some time past 
with Messrs. B. S. Williams & Son, Upper Holloway. 
IRIS PERS1CA. 
The bulbous and tuberous rooted species of Iris are 
all very interesting and beautiful. Most of them 
flower during the winter and spring, the so-called 
English and Spanish Irises being exceptional, as 
they flower in summer. The species under notice 
has the honour of being represented by the first 
plate in the Botanical Magazine, over a hundred 
years ago. It is a native of Asia Minor, extending 
from thence to Persia. The leaves are subulate, 
channelled, glaucous especially on the back and 
slightly longer than the flowers at flowering time, 
but it evidently varies in this respect according to 
conditions. The root-stock is short and tuberous 
with fleshy fibres, like that of I. Rosenbacheana. 
The falls are porcelain blue with a yellow ridge along 
the centre, on each side of which are a few violet 
spots; there is also a rich violet blotch near the 
apex of the lamina. The standards are spathulate, 
cut at the apex, short, reflexed and pale porcelain 
white. The stigmas are broad, bifid, and white with 
a pale sky blue band along the centre. The species 
flowers during February and March according to the 
nature of the season, and may now be seen with Mr. 
T. S. Ware, Hale Farm Nurseries, Tottenham. 
