46 
House & Garden 
Not infrequently on a woody road in early spring you catch the indescribably svjeet perfume and follow 
it to where the little evergreen leaves and pink-white blossoms nestle close to the ground 
THE CULTURE OE TRAILING ARBUTUS 
Hints for Taming a Wild Flower of the Forest 
to The Environment of the Garden 
A PRELUDE to spring is the cry of 
“Sweet arbutus!” in the city streets. 
There comes to memory the freshness of 
the woodlands and on a dark, laurel dotted 
slope a quick surprise of fragrant pink and 
white rosettes, almost hidden under luxuri¬ 
ant green. 
That arbutus can be subjected to culti¬ 
vation is a triumph of gardening too little 
understood. Many an ambitious gardener 
has transplanted arbutus only to see it 
wither and die in a month or a year. The 
greatest care may have been taken to pre¬ 
serve the roots intact with plenty of the 
native soil about them, and the plant may 
have been out of the ground only a few 
hours. But something in the new situation 
is unfavorable. Some element in the soil, 
some matter of exposure or drainage results 
in the death of the transplanted vine. 
Arbutus which has once grown in a cer¬ 
tain situation almost never succeeds in 
another. Apparently the trouble lies largely 
in the roots, which seem unable to withstand 
the shock of moving. In some cases the 
plants live for two years, but fail to bloom; 
finally their leaves turn brown and drop ofif. 
Propagation from Seed 
The best and surest, although slowest, 
method of propagating trailing arbutus is 
by seed. It seems almost incredible that the 
fruit of such a well-loved plant was very 
little known until a few years ago. Arbutus 
is, of course, very inconspicuous at best, in 
the blooming season, and interest in it has 
been general only during this short period. 
To these causes the ignorance concerning 
its fruiting season may be attributed. 
Instead of setting a few seeds in a dry 
pod. the arbutus forms a sort of berry-like 
fruit, juicy and edible, often borne in abun¬ 
dance on vigorous plants which perfect fe¬ 
male blossoms. Ripening at the same time 
as the wild strawberry, the wall of the 
matured though still green fruit splits from 
the center into five parts, which turn back¬ 
ward and expose the whitish, fleshy interior, 
about y:\" in diameter and thickly dotted 
with tiny dark brown or blackish seeds. All 
these years the ants and some of the birds 
have known the secret; they have been en¬ 
joying the juicy pulp and incidentally plant¬ 
ing the seed far and wide. 
It follows, then, that you must be on the 
alert to gather the fruits before the wild 
O. M. BERTRAM 
things consume them. The plants will be 
more or less concealed by the foliage, but 
careful search in a good arbutus locality 
should disclose enough to grow all you will 
want. I have counted as many as seventeen 
fruits on a single plant, three or four grow¬ 
ing together in a cluster. 
Each of the fruits commonly bears from 
200 to 400 odd seeds. When ripe they may 
be rubbed loose from the pulpy part by a 
slight pressure of the fingers. The pulp is 
quite juicy when crushed, so the fruit must 
be rubbed back and forth until the surface 
of the seeds is dry and they may be rolled 
off on to a sheet of paper. They should then 
be shifted to a smaller sheet folded into a 
trough, from which they can be pushed a 
few at a time by means of a pencil tip or 
sliver of wood. 
Sow the seeds at once in a well drained, 
shallow box, filled with a mixture of two 
parts finely sifted laurel thicket peat and 
one part clean sand. It is well to secure 
these ingredients in advance and dry them 
out so that they can be easily mixed, and 
The best time to locate wild arbutus is dur¬ 
ing early May. It may be propagated from 
seed gathered the latter part of June 
that there need be no delay in planting the 
seeds once they are obtained. 
A covering of about 1/16" of the same 
soil mixture will be sufficient, and the whole 
flat should then be thoroughly watered with 
a very fine rose, taking care not to 
uncover the seeds in the process. If cov¬ 
ered with glass and kept from direct sun¬ 
light, they may not need to be watered again 
before they germinate. Protection from ants 
is frequently required after the seeds begin 
to come up, three or four weeks after plant¬ 
ing ; this is easily accomplished by setting 
the seed boxes on flower pots inverted in 
pans of water. In midsummer, neither the 
young nor the old plants should be exposed 
to full sunlight; the arbutus often grows 
naturally in shady places, and will never 
succeed under adverse conditions. 
Potting and Care 
When the plants are about y%" in diam¬ 
eter, three or four months after germina¬ 
tion, they should be potted in 2" pots, with 
the same soil described above, though in 
different proportions. Put in nine parts 
laurel thicket soil to one part sand, and add 
a few pieces of clean, broken crock to light¬ 
en the mixture and make it more porous. 
Potted arbutus plants grown in this way 
will continue to grow all through the first 
winter if kept in a gi'eenhouse with a night 
temperature of 35° to 60° and a day tem¬ 
perature running from 65° to 70°, and in 
the following summer some of them may 
form a few clusters of flower buds and 
bloom the succeeding spring. A great many, 
however, do not bloom until they are two 
and a half years old. At this time they will 
be handsome, stocky plants with rosettes 
7" to 10" in diameter—much more flourish¬ 
ing in appearance than their wild relatives. 
The flower buds form from midsummer 
to autumn, though I haA^e seen them well 
defined in late June. But if the plants are 
kept in a warm greenhouse all fall and win¬ 
ter, their blossoms seldom open. To make 
them open normally, it is necessaiw to sub¬ 
ject the buds to a long period of chilling, 
though actual freezing is not required. The 
best chilling temperature for the greenhouse 
is a little above freezing—say about 35° 
Fahrenheit. Alternate freezing and strong 
sunlight are likely to injure the foliage, 
though after the chilling period sunlight 
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