The Garden Magazine, August, 1923 
379 
and a half to five months, averaging three and a 
half months. They often gave two blossomings 
in a year. Most of the large-flowered sorts 
—Mrs. Francis King, Panama, Princeps, 
and others—remained dormant for about 
ten and a half months. America rested 
fourteen months and deteriorated rap¬ 
idly. 
Some seed and corms which had 
failed to grow were put in the icebox, 
and after a month in moist sand they 
started growth while still on the ice. 
We are accustomed to think of hi¬ 
bernation as a winter rest, due to 
cold or dryness, but Gladiolus were 
stimulated to growth by combined 
cold and moisture. The one excep¬ 
tion in the primulinus hybrids, which 
grew after a short rest without chill¬ 
ing, 1 think most clearly indicates 
the reason for this. One parent of 
these sorts, the Maid of the Mist 
(Gladiolus primulinus) comes from the 
Victoria Falls region of tropical Africa, 
where there is no distinct winter. Most 
of the other cultivated Gladiolus, though they are 
complex hybrids of many species, are de¬ 
rived mainly from Cape species, from sub¬ 
tropical South Africa near the Cape of 
Good Hope, where they normally have 
cool winters, and apparently have come 
to require cold to start them growing. 
While many sorts of Gladiolus may 
be successfully flowered in the trop¬ 
ics, and at all seasons, those derived 
from the Maid of the Mist as one 
parent adapt themselves to such 
conditions easiest. The recently 
introduced late flowering hybrids 
derived from the closely related 
species, G. quartinianus, may prove 
equally adaptable, although they 
were not tried in the Philippines. 
Flower lovers in the tropics may 
use Gladiolus in their gardens quite 
as effectively as is done in the 
United States, and they are among 
the very few familiar flowers to thrive 
in the humid tropics. 
The Hibiscus makes 
a fine outdoor display 
SUNS AND STARS 
T. DABNEY MARSHALL 
Narcissus in a Mississippi Garden Whose Forebears 
Came from Shakespeare’s England More Than a Cen¬ 
tury Ago—Gold and Silver Crowned Beauties that 
Joyfully Reappear Season After Season in the South 
M i YOU yearn for suns and stars in your garden? Would 
you welcome salvers of silver and chalices of beaten 
gold—trumpets from elf-land, where odors not sounds 
are the melodies? When the winter is wearing to its 
end and your heart has almost died of hunger for blossoms in 
the yard, would you like one week to see the beds of your garden 
just a stretch of sodden brown with here and there a tinge of 
green and then the week after to look upon such a dazzle of gold, 
such heaps of stars that you think the spirit of your garden must 
have plundered the high heavens of all their treasures? 
If you would, plant Narcissus! 
Would you like a class of plants that have all the merits of 
other flowers, and but few of their defects? Would you like a 
floral family which has not a black sheep in the flock and upon 
whose cheeks a dingy color is unknown? Would you like the 
beds in your yard and the vases in your home to be filled with 
brightness from late in February until the middle of April and 
sometimes nearly into May? Do you wish flowers that, when 
cut, will keep for days and days and can be shipped a thousand 
miles and arrive as fresh as when you dashed the morning dews 
from their hearts? 
If you do, plant Narcissus! 
Do not be stingy with them. Plant them not by the dozens 
but by the hundreds. Plant them in sheets and masses and you 
will be simply astounded at the effectiveness of the display. 
Plant them in narrow four .oot beds winding in and out among 
the grasses and shrubs and you will have highways of gold for 
the fairies’ feet. A single Narcissus is a thing of beauty, but 
a thousand are unspeakably glorious. 
“If you have but two loaves of bread,” says a prophet wise in 
his day, “sell one and buy Hyacinths for your soul.” Do not do 
it. Sell the extra loaf all right enough, but invest in Narcissus. 
Hyacinths are clumsy and gaudy and their bulbs fade away 
after a season or so. Narcissus are graceful, exquisite in color, 
and persistent. They are among the hardiest of our flowers. 
They fill you with shame, blooming as they will under gross 
neglect and responding so gratefully to cultivation and care. 
Glorious Resurrection After Battle 
B EFORE the Civil War my mother’s yard was full of them. 
Her grandmother had brought them to Mississippi when 
they moved there from Virginia more than a hundred years ago. 
That grandmother’s grandmother had brought the original 
stock from the old home in England. Perhaps Shakespeare 
had seen and was thinking of their ancestors when he spoke of 
the “ Daffodils that come before the swallow dares, and take the 
winds of March with beauty.” Perhaps their descendants 
danced for Wordsworth on the banks of Lake Windermere and 
suggested “thought that did lie too deep for tears.” 
