The Lyendel Letter 
This year has been a full one in the lives of the Leonians 
who are going on with the Lyondel plant-breeding work. It has 
been very busy but at the same time highly educative. The 
mishaps which have delayed us on some occasions are the same 
ones which cause your difficulties, slugs that demolish a flat 
over night; cyclamen mite; dry weather just when it can do the 
most harm. The things that discourage you have a similar effect 
with us but, judging from the way in which you try again, we 
are an optimistic group—we flower growers. 
We here have every reason to be cheerful since we can see 
ways in which we do better this year than last. This is another 
way of saying that there is much room for improvement to be 
made and that we expect to develop as we learn more from 
training and experience and go about putting these lessons in- 
to practice. However there are certain standards and conditions 
which have made Lyondel Gardens one of the leading delphini- 
um breeding centers in the country—standards and condi- 
tions which are as much a part of the program as they were 
ten years ago. 
1. All seeds are hand pollenized. No open pollenized ones 
are sold because we feel such practice is not in keeping with 
our high hopes for the product you will see bloom in your 
garden. i 
2. The price has been the same through good years and 
bad. Inflation is not influenced by our price schedule. 
3. Our stock is frankly one made up from the best of our 
own plants crossed with each other and with the best we are 
able to grow from those of other careful hybridizers. 
4. Our seed supply is necessarily limited because of our 
rigorous selection of parent plants and the limits put upon our 
program by conditions growing out of the war period. 
5. We endeavor to use the newer and better stock to the 
exclusion of that which has been out-moded in our garden. 
6. The changing weather in the Morgantown area with 
its full share of hot temperature in mid-summer tends to pro- 
duce plants with longer-than-average life span. 
How to Grow Delphiniums 
Successfully 
The first thing to do is to find out in which zone of delph- 
iniums you are located. There are four of these: the annual, 
the biennial, the short-lived perennial, and the true perennial. 
In Florida and certain parts of the South delphiniums are 
strictly annuals, dying off after the first display of bloom. In 
certain other parts of the South they behave as biennials; in 
most parts of Midwest they are biennial or short-lived peren- 
nials, while in North they are true perennials. Once you de- 
termine your zone, you will know what to expect and spare 
yourself all kinds of disillusionment. Having determined this, 
there remains another important factor: are you located in 
the fall-sowing or spring-sowing zone? Where seasons, are 
short and July and August are likely to be warm and dry, 
fall-sowing may be disastrous, and spring should be the time 
to sow the seeds. Therefore you should purchase your seeds 
in the fall, put them in tightly stoppered vials, and keep them 



