f, 
1884.] 
THE AMERICAN GARDEN. 
9 
OHCGNOSTEMMA HISPIDA. 
Among the many desirable plants recently 
brought to notice, the Choeuostemma de¬ 
serves a prominent place, and although not 
new. to botanists, its good qualities as a 
house plant seem to liave been strangely 
overlooked. The flowers are star-shaped, 
pure white, about a quarter of an inch in 
diameter, and borne in so great a profusion 
as to comiiletely cover the small, bushy 
plants. It is an almost continuous bloomer, 
admirably adapted for the window garden, 
as well as for growing in vases and baskets 
outdoors in summer. 
HOW NEW E0SE8 AEE PEODUOBD. 
“ Where do the now Roses come from ? 
Who discovers or makes them ? If they are 
made, how are they 
made ? Does it pay to 
make them ? What is 
the reason that of late 
years Roses generally 
seem to be getting larger 
than they used to be f ” 
These and several 
other related questions 
were asked of a promi¬ 
nent florist, and thus 
. reported to thoA’ca'-rorA; 
Sun. 
“New Roses,” he re¬ 
plied, “ come from Eng¬ 
land and France mainly, 
although some are jiro- 
duced in other Em’opean 
countries, and a few, 
very few, may claim to 
be American. 'When you 
see a Rose that you have 
not been accustomed to 
seeing, it is by no means 
safe, however, to assume 
that it is an altogether 
new one. It may be sim¬ 
ply one that has disap¬ 
peared from public view 
for a number of years, 
and dm’ing that time has 
been kept in existence 
by some individual grow¬ 
er who has had a partic¬ 
ular liking for it. Look 
at the Bon Silene and the 
Niphetos, for instance. 
Both are old Boses. The 
first-named was once dis¬ 
carded in this country, 
and went entirely out of 
• popular knowledge for 
fifteen years. "When it 
re-appeared it came from 
France to Boston, thence 
to this city, and from 
here spread everywhere. 
It is now a generally pop¬ 
ular favorite. It is not large, but its buds are 
perfectly formed, and it has a charming tint. 
“ The long, white, beautiful buds of the 
Niphetos were grown here forty years ago, 
but, through some chance, nobody seems to 
know exactly how, the variety became en¬ 
tirely lost, and twenty years elapsed before 
it re-appeared. When it did re-appear it was 
introduced into the trade in France by a 
man named Granger. WTiere he got it is a 
mystery. He called it by its original name, 
but claimed that it was an entirely new Rose. 
Old growers, however, knew it was not jiew. ! 
It is universally admired; and now that we 
have learned far more than -we used to know 
about the cultivation of this sort of Roses, 
gardeners find it a pi'olitable variety. It re¬ 
quires a gi’eat deal of heat all the time, and 
it is difficult to bring it into fine bloom unless 
it is humored in evoiy way. 
“But you ask me how new Roses ai'e 
made. They are grown from the seed. 
Patient men, with a mildly speculative bent f 
of mind, in Prance and Germany, give their ' 
whole minds to it, and their work begins ' 
even before the formation of the seed. To I 
explain : The large new Roses are technic- I 
ally kno%vn as ‘ hybrid perpetuals,’ and are 
crosses between, or descendants from, the 
hardy June Rose and certain varieties of the j 
remontant Roses. The remontauts are those I 
CHCENOSTEMMA HISPIDA. 
commonly and incorrectly known as monthly 
Boses. They are not monthly, any more 
than their children are perpetual. Their 
French name signifies remounting, or con¬ 
tinuing to ascend, and is given to them from 
their habit of sending up new shoots and 
putting forth new bloom almost continuously 
through a great part of the year, without any 
definitely prescribed flowering season. The 
flower of one of those Roses — a choice one, 
ripe, fully open, and perfectly developed— 
is used to impregnate another Rose, also as 
perfect as can be selected of the hardier 
variety, and the seed from the impregnated 
flower is carefully saved, and, in due time, 
sown. 
“Acres upon acres the grower fills \vith the 
experimental plants that spring from these 
seeds, which occasionally reprodnce the 
parent plants, but are far more likely to 
develop into an infinite number of varieties, 
good, bad, and indifllerent. These yonng 
plants have to be carefully tended for three 
years before it is known what they will be. 
Then, if the gi'ower gets two or three new 
varieties that are really fine, he is content; 
and if he obtains half a dozen ho considers 
himself in great luck for getting so many out 
of 10,000 seedlings, to which he has given 
three years of patient care and skillful cul¬ 
tivation. The remaining 9994 are only 
brush, fit merely to burn. 
Sometimes, when thej' 
are all in bloom, lie sees 
that he might just as well 
burn the whole 10,000 ; 
but that is exceptionally 
bad luck. He ought to 
get one out of the lot, 
anyway. Suppose that 
he does — the work has 
just begun. In order to 
get back his investment 
in the expeiament and 
make anything by it, 
he mnst have 5000 or 
10,000 plants ready to 
throw upon the market 
at once. Then he springs 
his new Bose as a sm- 
prise upon the trade, and 
it commands good prices. 
“All these plants must 
be produced from his 
one solitary little seed¬ 
ling. It has to be kept 
in constant heat in the 
greenhouse, its rapidly 
making new wood being 
snipped oil and 2 Jropa- 
gated as fast as jiossi- 
ble, and the plants so 
produced being used to 
start- others, and so on 
for two years before the 
discovei'er of the new 
Bose can venture to say 
to the public, ‘How do 
you like my new 
beauty ? ’ 
“But, even then, do 
not suppose that the 
subsequent cultivation 
of that Rose is all plain 
sailing. Many Boses that 
have been great suc¬ 
cesses in England and 
France have been entire 
failures over here, the 
great change in climatic conditions prevent¬ 
ing theii- development, '^''ery often they will 
not bloom at all here, or, if brought to flower, 
the result is so bad that it does not pay to 
cultivate them. But this cannot bo deter¬ 
mined imtil after two years of trial. No 
prudent gardener would discard a plant 
because it failed the first year. It must get 
acehmated. Then the development of the 
second year may be just enough to encour¬ 
age him to give it a third year’s trial; and, 
after all, it may turn out to be useless.” 
