January 4, 1890. 
THE GARDENING WORLD. 
281 
those of adjoining flowers, so that in looking at a board 
one cannot say where each flower begins and where it 
ends. No object of beauty ought to be used to smash 
another, yet exhibition Chrysanthemums of that sort 
are permitted to do so without protest. Again, long 
lines of tables (reminding me of the days when my 
drawing-master taught me the mysteries of perspective) 
with never-ending rows of cut blooms may be methodical, 
but it is not pretty nor attractive. If a man wets his 
finger to turn over the pages of a beautiful book, or 
pokes a hole in a picture with his umbrella to point 
out its beauties to a friend, he is a vandal and ought to 
be stopped. Why, then, should beautiful flowers be 
maltreated and no one say a word ? There are other 
points that might be raised if one were inclined to be 
querulous, but that is not my object. The originator 
of this discussion attacked the blooms themselves, and 
particularly the incurved section. That, however, is a 
subject outside the scope of my remarks.— 0. Harman 
Payne. 
The New Catalogue. 
Mr. Harman Payne having 
in your last intimated the 
probability of a new cata¬ 
logue being issued by the 
National Chrysanthemum 
Society, I trust those who 
undertake the work of 
revision will pay some atten¬ 
tion to the vexed question 
of the identity of Baionne de 
Prailly with Comtesse de 
Beauregarde. In the present 
catalogue, the hair splitting 
as regards colour, and word 
twisting on other points is 
amusing enough, but not 
satisfactory to exhibitors. 
So long as the catalogue is 
accepted by societies and ex¬ 
hibitors as the authority for 
nomenclature, and these 
varieties remain unbracketed 
as synonyms, will there 
be conflicts between judges 
and exhibitors, which it 
would be well to avoid. So 
long also, when they are 
staged in good faith, should 
there be equality in justice 
and in perception, and not 
utter disqualification. Be¬ 
tween compilers of schedules 
and judges, exhibitors hardly 
know what to do to be 
right. There are a great 
many growers who read and 
think, yet who do not care 
to commit their thoughts to 
paper, but who among 
themselves discuss what they 
read about disqualification, 
and like to see even-handed 
justice dealt out to those 
who incur the labour and 
trouble involved in exhibit¬ 
ing. — B. Lockwood , West 
Riding. 
- •*£*■ 
ST. BRIGID’S CHRISTMAS ROSE. 
Such is the name given to one of the finest forms of 
the Christmas Rose. It is applied to Helleborus niger 
angustifolius, which was described by Gerard and 
Parkinson as the true Christmas Rose from the fact 
of its flowering naturally about the end of the old year 
and the beginning of the new. The large variety, 
H. n. altifolius, commences flowering about two months 
earlier. Of the former, now frequently spoken of as 
St. Brigid’s Christmas Rose, we have received 
specimens from Mr. T. S. Ware, Hale Farm Nurseries, 
Tottenham. The blooms measured from 3£ ins. to 
nearly 4 ins. in diameter, and were really splendid. 
A noticeable feature about the variety is the purity of 
the flowers, there being none of the pink traces about 
it that are observable on H. n. altifolius. Even the 
tips of the styles are white, as well as that of the 
bracts, and the peduncles are pale green and entirely 
without purple spots. The anthers are pale yellow, 
and the white filaments almost conceal the whorl of 
tubular, green and yellow-tipped petals. One pe¬ 
duncle bore two flowers, both springing from one bract, 
whereas another bearing two bracts had only one 
flower. Those who do not already possess this beau¬ 
tiful variety should make an effort to obtain it, for it 
is pure white and really handsome when grown to such 
perfection as those sent us. 
The lower central figure of our illustration A, repre¬ 
sents H. n. altifolius, which in size and outline may be 
compared to St. Brigid’s Christmas Rose. The leaf 
and the spotting of the peduncle, two of the strongest 
distinctive features of the variety, are not, however, 
shown. The spotted flowers represent two of the finest 
garden forms in cultivation. They belong to the group 
popularly known under the name of Lenten Roses, and 
consequently to quite different species from H. niger. 
The dark-coloured one, B, is that known as H. punc- 
tatus, which has purple flowers freely spotted all over 
with purple. It is by some classed as a variety of H. 
colchicus, but being of hybrid origin, another form 
named H. guttatus may have been the other parent. 
The flower on the left upper hand corner, C, corre¬ 
sponds to H. punctatissimus, which has a pale rosy 
purple ground colour profusely spotted all over with 
dark purple. Both of the spotted forms are very hand¬ 
some, and should be in every collection. They are in 
perfection in March, but in mild winters they flower 
considerably earlier. 
--»$<-- 
EARLY v. LATE WINTER 
TRENCHING. 
At this season of the year it is usual in most kitchen 
gardens to take every advantage afforded of open 
weather to push forward with all speed the digging, 
trenching, and manuring of all vacant plots of ground, 
and to have all such work finished as early as possible, 
and where the nature and character of the soil will 
admit of this early digging, &c., being done, it is, no 
doubt, in most instances, wise to have these operations 
well in hand ere the busy seed time of spring arrives, 
for each day at that season brings its own work. 
All soils, however, are not alike in their composition 
and texture, and I am not so sure if better results 
would not more often follow on soils of a stiff or clayey 
nature, resting on a substratum of clay, by leaving the 
digging and trenching of such soils to be done in early 
spring. 
On this question of early digging, trenching and 
manuring of ground, the writer of a certain calendar 
of outdoor operations during every month of the year, 
opens the month of March with this homily to kitchen 
gardeners : “ He who has all or much of the rough 
work still to do is a lazy gardener, and, like those who 
have lost a day in their lifetime which they have 
never regained, will always be behind.” 
Now, a gardener may, simply from choice, and from 
his having a knowledge of soils, and a right apprecia¬ 
tion of the difference in their working conditions at 
different seasons, have all or much of his ground to dig 
in early spring. But because he has left much of it to 
be done in spring, it does not necessarily follow that he 
is a lazy gardener or a day behind. Possibly, the 
calendar writer alluded to intended his homily of 
advice to be taken in a general sense ; anyway I think 
it loses much of its force for the want of a qualification, 
which qualification might have taken some such form 
as follows :—But since soils vary so very much in 
their composition and tex¬ 
ture, from a sandy and easily 
workable one to that of a 
stiff sticky clay of a very 
intractable nature, it would 
be better that each gar¬ 
dener should make himself 
thoroughly acquainted with 
the nature and character of 
the soil with which he has 
to deal, and also to study 
the kind and the nature of 
the vegetable the ground is 
to be cropped with. He will 
then be in a position to 
judge whether it will be wise 
or not to have all or part 
only of his ground trenched 
before or after March comes 
in. 
In the early years of my 
charge here I made it a 
point to have every vacant 
plot of ground trenched and 
manured as early in the 
winter season as possible, 
with the view of subjecting 
the soil to the sweetening in- 
fluenceand pulverisingaction 
of frosts, hoping thereby to 
secure a light and finely- 
divided tilth, which would 
be in the lest possible con¬ 
dition for the reception of 
seeds and plants at planting 
time. I soon found, how¬ 
ever, that the early turned- 
up ground, after receiving 
the heavy rains and snowfalls 
of winter, was in a much 
worse and waterlogged con¬ 
dition in the spring than 
ground that had been left 
undug, and was far from 
being in a suitable state for 
the getting in of the crops. 
This was not quite the 
result I had hoped and looked 
for, especially after my assiduous care and attention to 
the not putting off digging, &c., till to-morrow when it 
could well be done to-day. True, I might have re¬ 
joiced in the fact—so far, at least, as the forwardness 
of the digging and manuring was concerned—that I 
had gained a day, not lost one, like the lazy gardener 
of the before-mentioned calendar writer ; but the after¬ 
results clearly showed that the old proverb, “More 
haste, worst speed,” could apply even to early digging, 
trenching, and manuring of ground. 
The fact is, the greater part of the soil with which 
we have to deal, and which we cultivate principally 
for vegetables, is a stiff clayey loam resting on a deep 
bed of clay, and is very retentive of moisture, friable 
enough when dry, but very sticky when wet, and 
capable of being beat down as hard as a board with 
heavy rains. If it is worked or trodden upon when wet 
on the surface or full of moisture, it turns up again in 
close livery lumps, and in this condition dries very hard 
and steely-like under a few hours of sunshine, and 
requires a great deal of labour to break it to pieces 
again before anything like a fit surface can be made 
ready for either seeds or plants. 
I have always found our soil that is trenched up in 
early winter to be wetter in the spring, and takes s 
A 
Christmas and Lenten Roses. A.— Helleborus niger altifolius ; B.— H. punctatus ; 
C.—II. PUNCTATISSIMUS. 
