
News Letter 
September, 1950 
EERE LB SERED IEEE 
Dear Friends: 
Get your mind off the war for a minute 
and let’s talk violets. 
Had any trouble with marked flowers this 
summer? When the daytime temperature gets 
up around ninety-some-odd and the night temp- 
erature drops to sixty, flower-marking often re- 
sults. White streaks down the center of the 
petals from the corona to the outer edge. The 
prevailing theory is that African Violet tempera- 
ture shouldn’t vary more than ten or fifteen 
degrees. If you live in a locality subject to 
sudden drops in night temperature, it might not 
be a bad idea to lower the windows in front of 
the plants before you go to bed. 
Nobody knows anything about violets. Now 
before you get mad, let me explain what I mean. 
Men were growing roses several centuries before 
Christ. Horticultural handbooks dating from Eli- 
zabethan times recommend substantially the same 
rose culture which is practiced today. The first 
Saintpaulia seed, on the other hand, was sent to 
Europe from Africa in 1893, a little more than 
fifty years ago. And consider the fate of the 
Copyright, September, 1950, by Russell Gray 

