10 
A BLUE BOOK OF RARE GLADS 
Mr. Walter Miller, of Sun Prairie, Wis., who is an enthus¬ 
iastic booster for the Scheer seedlings, was away on a foreign 
trip when we wrote him regarding these seedlings, but I am 
sure if he is at home when you read this, he will be glad to 
vouch for the Scheer varieties and he was especially fond of 
CHIEF RED BIRD, being introduced this year, in these pages. 
Hybridizing the Gladiolus 
Scientifically 
Mr. Nitchman has asked me to give a little synopsis regard¬ 
ing my work in the hybridizing field as a preliminary for the 
introduction of this year’s-, offerings. I have here given a few 
remarks that might be considered history for me and I hope 
I shall not be boring you with the dry (to many) comment 
upon the process of crossing the gladiolus. 
My love for flowers was probably inherited, for I remember 
how as a kid of four or five I already had my little “garden” 
in one corner of my grandfather’s lot. I guess that, at one 
time or another, I have grown almost every species and 
variety that can be grown in our latitude, but I did not con¬ 
centrate my efforts on any particular kind until I became 
quite seriously interested in iris breeding some years back. 
Of course, I had grown glads years back, but since I grew 
theim in mixture only, at the time they did not sierve to 
stimulate much interest in them. 
My real interest in gladiolus dates back some years to the 
time when I bought some 45 of the best standard varieties of 
the day for the purpose of having plenty of material flor 
cemetery bouquets; after my work with iris, I was immediate¬ 
ly impressed with the possibilities of improving the existing 
varieties and I lost no time starting to work on glads. The 
net result of my first year’s work was some 75 lots of seed 
from carefully hand-pollenated crosses. It seems that my in¬ 
tuition served me well from the start, for when these first 
seedlings reached the blooming stage there were found among 
them a goodly number that showed considerable advance in 
one way or another. So encouraging were the results, in fact, 
